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CHILDREN OF 
THE WIND 


SOME NEW BORZOI NOVELS 
FALL, 1923 

A LOST LADY 

Willa Cather 

JANET MARCH 

Floyd Dell 

THE CIMBRIANS 

Johannes V. Jensen 

HEART’S BLOOD 

Ethel M. Kelley 

THE BACK SEAT 

G. B. Stem 

THE BACHELOR GIRL 

Victor Margueritte 

THE BLIND BOW-BOY 

Carl Van Vechten 

JANE—OUR STRANGER 

Mary Borden 

THE THREE IMPOSTORS 

Arthur Machen 


THE VOICE ON THE MOUNTAIN 

Marie, Queen of Roumania 


CHILDREN OF 
THE WIND 

,, by 

M. P. SHIEL 



NEW YORK 

ALFRED • A • KNOPF 
1923 


COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC, 


Published August, 1923 





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Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. 
Paper furnished by IP. F. Etherington & Co., New York. 

Bound by H. Wolff Estate, New York. 


MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

AUG 21’23 

©C1A752596 

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CONTENTS 


I. ROLLS 

9 

II. ROLLS STABBED 

13 

III. ROLLS LAID LOW 

21 

IV. THE “CASTLE” LINER 

28 

V. THE VOLUNTEER 

39 

VI. A QUESTION OF TEETH 

46 

VII. DUELLO 

54 

VIII. THE SIGODHLO 

63 

IX. THE ROYAL HUT 

67 

X. “the elephant” 

73 

XI. DZINIKULU 

79 

XII. THE QUEEN’S RETURN 

86 

XIII. THE GUEST-HOUSE 

94 

XIV. IN SUSPENSE 

102 

XV. DZINIKULU MOVES 

110 

XVI. THE RENDEZVOUS 

115 

XVII. IN THE BAOBAB 

125 

XVIII. WAR-DRUMS 

139 

XIX. BATTLE 

146 


CONTENTS 


XX. 

coup d’etat 

156 

XXI. 

SUEELA SPEEDS 

164 

XXII. 

SUEELA WASHED WHITE 

173 

XXIII. 

SUEELA CHANGING SIDE 

182 

XXIV. 

cobby’s “banquet” 

187 

XXV. 

THE ENTREE 

191 

XXVI. 

SUEELA SCHEMES 

199 

XXVII. 

THE CAPTURE IN THE PASS 

205 

XXVIII. 

SUEELA MARRIED 

213 

XXIX. 

SEBINGWE 

223 

XXX. 

IN THE CANES 

232 

XXXI. 

NIGHT-RIDE 

239 

XXXII. 

THE WAGGONS 

246 

XXXIII. 

THE BANKNOTES 

254 

XXXIV. 

CALAMITY 

261 

.XXXV. 

CRASH 

266 

vXXXVI. 

QUEEN SUEELA 

273 

<XXXVII. 

BELLADONNA 

278 

XXXVIII. 

REINSTATEMENT 

284 

XXXIX. 

THE SWINGONI 

290 

XL. 

EN ROUTE 

296 

XLI. 

AFRICA 

301 


CHILDREN OF 
THE WIND 




I 


ROLLS 

WARREN COBBY writes in his diary (June 



‘Tea in the Carlton tea-room with Jeffson of the 


F. Office, when in walks Stead of the Bank, with a man of 
Greater-British type—‘flash’ hat, rather handsome person, 
black-bearded, blue-eyed, browp-baked—forty-five, fifty. 
Stead, on seeing me, throws up a finger, as who should say 
‘the very man,’ and, coming to my table, introduced the co¬ 
lonial as ‘Mr. R. K. Rolls,’ adding: ‘By special request, 


Cobby.’ 


“ ‘Mr. Rolls knew of me,’ I remarked. 

“ ‘That’s so, Mr. Cobby: happy to make your acquaintance,* 
Rolls said, and we four had tea and talked, or three of us, 
for the tongue of my Rolls was still: not so the man’s eyes 
though, I noticed, for I think that nobody entered, went out, 
or moved in the place, that he did not see it—apprehensive, 
haunted perhaps I might say; and though one gets a general 
impression from his air and gait of a laggard and languid 
swagger, some of his motions and glances are as sharp as a 
panther’s—middle-sized man, straight in the legs, his blue 
eyes broody, sleepy—sleep of the spinning-top, perhaps—and 
written all over him ‘ Experience .’ 

“He interested me—apart from my curiosity as to what 
the man wanted to know me for. 

“ ‘You know Australia, I think, Mr. Rolls?’ I said to him. 

“ ‘Oh, yes,’ he answered absently, eyeing under his brows 
a man who stood up some way off; adding: ‘African mainly, 
Mr. Cobby.’ 


9 



10 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“Stead put in: ‘Explorer, I think we may say, Mr. Rolls?’ 

“ ‘Well, not quite,’ Rolls said, twisting now quickly away 
to peer at some one coming in, then adding with a twinkle in 
his eye: ‘never mind, “explorer” is near enough.’ 

“Then Jeffson invited the trio of us to Jermyn Street, and 
thither the journey was—stupid waste of time and life! In¬ 
ane people these super-clerks, and all their kind ‘about town.’ 
When they have forgotten Greek, there is nothing left in them, 
and before they forget there is nothing. Then, why associate 
with them? I won’t; not good enough: they waste life. 
Fifty of ’em aren’t worth one Rolls, I think. Dinner with 
them at ‘The Troc’; then ‘The Empire,’ to show girls in tights 
to Rolls, who has been in England only two weeks; but Rolls 
said that he was accustomed to see ‘more elegant’ legs than 
those without any tights on. Oh, the ‘Empire’! What’s Em¬ 
pire to me, or I to Empire? No, I was not amused. Then, 
walking up Regent Street, Rolls with me, the other two ahead, 
says Rolls: ‘Do me the honour to dine at my expense to¬ 
morrow?’ 

“ ‘The honour’—‘at my expense.’ If he had not said ‘at 
my expense,’ I should no doubt have said no, but this naif, 
and so true, way of putting it won me, so that I answered: 
‘Since you wish, Mr. Rolls. Why do you?’ 

“He looked about and behind before he answered: ‘You 
see, I know you better than you know me. Quite five years 
ago I did business with you, but you’ve forgotten; seen you 
several times before today. Then I’m a bit of a thought- 
reader in my way—“psychometrist,” they call it here—seen 
enough of that out there’—throwing his hand toward the 
Equator: ‘I could tell you quite a lot about yourself.’ 

“ ‘Tell me something,’ I said. 

“ ‘For one thing,’ he began, and then, quick as a wink, he 
span on his pins, calling out sharply to a man now close upon 
us: ‘Well, sir! How can I be of service to you ? 9 

“I saw a big man in a cloak, whose collar covered his ears, 
he standing now with shoulders shrugged up high, his inno- 


ROLLS 


11 


cent palms expanded, a picture of French astonishment, and 
says he to Rolls: ‘Mister addresses himself to me by chance?’ 

“Rolls made no answer, peered into his face, looked him 
up and down, then said to me: ‘Come on’; on which the 
other laughed, with some effort, I fancied, and crossed the 
street, as we moved on. 

“And presently Rolls remarked: ‘You see, we are of 
interest to others’; and when I asked him if he really be¬ 
lieved that that man had been eavesdropping upon us, he 
answered: ‘I know.’ 

“ ‘What for, though?’ I, asked him. 

“This he did not answer, but said: ‘I was to tell you 
something about yourself: check me, if I go wrong. Age 
thirty-two. Residence, Tillington, Sussex. Living alone with 
a sister. Man of means—no need to swot at work. Yet you 
do. Hard worker, energetic, always glancing at the clock. 
If I didn’t know it otherwise, I could spot it from the roan 
red of that hair of yours, from the style it grows upward 
and backward in a thicket of wires that curl, or from that 
fresh flush of your colour, or from the style your elbows 
work up and down when you walk, like an engine on the jig. 
Stern worker. Proud of your head-piece. Proud of your 
Age and Continent. “Nourishing a youth sublime with the 
fairy-tales of Science”—quotation from a poet. Now en¬ 
gaged for the Government at Teddington in discovering the 
best camber for aeroplane-wings. Fond of flight, of rush, 
of getting things over and done. / know you. For wealth 
you care nothing-’ 

“ ‘Don’t I, though, by Jove,’ I said: ‘love wealth—any form 
of Energy. Wealth is stored Force, Power, that is, God, and 
is well named goods; is potential Energy—Power to do good 
to oneself and others.’ 

“‘Well said,’ Rolls muttered: ‘yet you have two or three 
rich relatives, one of them’—he flung a flying glance behind 
—‘an emperor of wealth—a cousin—and little you bother 
about him, because he’s not of the intellectual set. And you 


12 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


have another cousin—female cousin’—now he puts his lips 
to my ear—‘a Queen , this one-’ 

“I could not help laughing out at the earnestness with 
which he imparted this absurdity; and I said to him: ‘No, 
there the “thought-reading” is miscarrying: no female cousin 
—certainly no queens in the family.’ 

“He did not answer at once, but then suddenly patted my 
arm, saying: ‘I may see fit to tell you more when we are 
better acquainted.’ 

“Soon after which, having arranged to meet tomorrow at 
the Hotel Cecil, we parted; and I walked back home by the 
Embankment under a black sky bright with Sirius and the 
three present planets.” 



II 

ROLLS STABBED 


T HE next night Cobby and Rolls duly dined together; 
and Cobby writes of it: 

“Such a care about the selection of the table! for 
Rolls must have one in a corner, whence to the survey all the 
salle a manger, 

“When this had been obtained, I showed him the note that 
had come to me by the morning’s post, on which Rolls pro¬ 
duced spectacles, saying, as in apology: T have the best of 
eyesight in sunlight, Mr. Cobby, but artificial light bowls me 
over for reading purposes.’ Then he muttered over the note 
‘type-written,’ and read it half-aloud drawlingly: ‘The man, 
R. K. Rolls, is nothing else than a common jail-bird, well- 
known in the Rand as an assassin, a slave-trader, a swindler 
and thief, a scoundrel of the deepest type. To be connected 
in any shape or form with this dirty rascal spells certain dis¬ 
aster. Be warned in time, Cobby. A well-wisher.’ 

“Looking at Rolls, as he read, I saw his eyes twinkle. ‘Oh, 
well,’ he said, taking off the spectacles, ‘you evidently don’t 
reckon me up to be as black as I’m painted, or you’d not be 
here.’ 

“I, told him no, that such a communication is without 
weight for me. 

“‘Then, we need say no more about it,’ he said, and: 
‘May I keep this pleasant missive?’ and, on my saying yes, 
put it inside his watch. 

“Then I had quite a pleasant evening with him. Though 
not exquisite in culture outside, he exhibits considerable 
shrewdness of wit on things in general, a sound sense, a 

13 


14 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

trained intelligence, and such a store-house of memories and 
world-lore as render him really an entertaining person, his 
lips once unsealed. I found myself liking, admiring him—so 
much, that when he expressed a wish to feel what flight is 
like, I immediately offered to take him into the air, he to 
come tomorrow to the aerodrome. It is not true that he is 
a rogue: I know better. Of the anonymous note he said noth¬ 
ing more until the dinner was over, we then smoking ‘long 
Toms,’ as he called them, cigar-sticks which he produced out 
of a tube of leopard-skin, his dress-clothes being constructed 
with quite a number of pockets apparently; and now he 
said to me: ‘I suppose you couldn’t reckon up who it was 
sent you that pleasant missive?’ 

“I said no, how could I without data? on which he, his 
voice dropping to secrecy: ‘That comes from a cousin of 
yours.’ 

“This had the effect of tickling me, and I said, ‘Really! 
You people the world with my cousins, Rolls.’ 

“ ‘I have only mentioned two all told,’ he answered—‘a 
male and a female.’ 

“‘I think I have only one cousin,’ I told him—‘a Yankee 

—millionaire—man named Douglas Macray-’ 

Let s talk low,’ he muttered; and added: *he is our man, 

sir.’ 

Well, hut,’ I said, ‘the man does not know me’; but then, 
remembering something, I mentioned that he knew of me, 
since, some years ago, I got from him an invitation to a ball, 
but didn t go; on which Rolls said: ‘Ay, always giving 
big parties, fond of fal-lals and high jinks, especially in 
Paris. You’ve called him “a Yankee,” hut he’s only half 
that, since, as you know, his mother and yours were English 
sisters, and he has mostly lived in France. Curious °you 
never chanced to drop across him. I’ll introduce him now to 
you.” 

“On this Rolls picked something from a pocket, and, hold¬ 
ing it within his fist, brought his fist into contact with my 



ROLLS STABBED 


15 


palm, on which he left a disc of cardboard, and I saw the 
photograph of a man of thirty or so—bearded—something 
hard-headed, cynical, self-seeking (I fancied)—man of some 
draught and horse-power, tearing toward his own ends—or 
that was my impression—something flat and flabby about the 
upper lip, as though he lacked upper teeth. . . . 

“Rolls, taking back the photograph as clandestinely as he 
had handed it, said: ‘That’s Douglas Macray—that’s the 
gentleman. Never saw him in the flesh myself: but that’s he.’ 

“ ‘Well, what about him?’ I asked. ‘Why are you and 
he bad friends?’ 

“ ‘Because’—he tossed down his ‘long Tom’ with empha¬ 
sis—‘I refuse to be bribed by his dirty hand; and because 
he drops to it why I am in England, and wants to bottle me 
up-’ 

“ ‘Why are you in England?’ 

“ ‘Mainly to get you .’ 

“ ‘How do you mean “get” me, Rolls,’ I demanded. 

“ ‘Get you out yonder,’—he nodded away toward one of 
the continents. 

“ ‘Get me to go to Africa?’ I asked. 

“ ‘That’s about it.’ 

“ ‘You won’t do that, Rolls,’ I told him. 

“On which he muttered, with his eyes cast down: ‘Leave it 
at that for the present. Maybe when I see my way to put 
my cards down, you won’t be off it. A Red Kaffir inyanga — 
that’s a doctoress—predicted that what I am now on would 
come off all right, though I might die in the attempt, said 
she. Well, you don’t believe in inyangas, and yet I could tell 
you a tale or two-’ 

“ ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘tell me tales . . . though, of course, 
I am trained to believe in white people, not in black.’ 

“But this as little influenced his conviction as it unfixed the 
sculpture of those tough and weather-beaten wrinkles of his 
face. ‘Well, no doubt,’ he answered: ‘but it appears, Mr. 
Cobby, that we are made with two minds—the conscious mind 



16 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

has talent, and finds things out, but the subconscious, that’s 
really the cleverer fellow of the two, has genius, and knows , 
without swotting to find out: this being true, not only of 
humans, but of horses, dogs, elephants. I know a little 
Basuto pony that foreknew the date of his master’s death’— 
he now proceeded to relate several tales of African occultism, 
but without presenting any proof of their truth, while we 
each smoked another Tong Tom,’ he finishing up with the 
advice, ‘Don’t despise the negro, Mr. Cobby,’ and with the 
statement: ‘After all, the savage is ahead of the civilized.’ 

“This dictum disappointed me in him, as I had thought 
better of his intelligence; but even here it turned out that he 
had a meaning, and he can be very convincing when he sets 
himself to prove. He said: ‘That, to you, is all-out non¬ 
sense, no doubt. But reflect a bit; what is it that all are 
after—all dogs, men, Martians, angels? “Happiness,” you’ll 
say, since nothing else can possibly be of any interest to 
any life for one instant. Yonder hangs a Christ on his 
Cross: what’s he there for? The good of others? Sure 
thing: but that’s what makes him happy, look; and he 
bears the nails, that “he may see of the travail of his 
soul and be satisfied,” or happy. Or look at that man 
yonder flying from a prairie-fire—staring he is, crazy for life; 
then look yonder at that other holding a revolver at his fore¬ 
head: both flying from sorrow, both after happiness. Same 
with you brooding in your laboratory: for you the discovery 
of truth spells happiness, and your interest in truth is an 
interest in happiness: for why should you care more for truth 
than for untruth, for pudding more than for putty, for any 
one thing more than for any other thing, but that truth and 
pudding make for happiness? Happiness is the aim of the 
race of life; and, of course, those nearer the aim are ahead of 
those not so near.’ 

“To this I readily agreed, since really it is an axiom; but 
asked him if he considered savages happier than I; to which 
he answered: ‘No, not than you; but such as you aren’t Civ- 


17 


ROLLS STABBED 

ilized Man: you’re an accident of civilization. Like you are 
half a million, say, in England—foreigners looking on at the 
forty million real English inspanned to the buck-waggon of 
England, dragging at the trek-tow, sweating great drops. 
Well, of course, that’s not practical politics; that’s no chop 
any road: Unhappy is the name of it. Hence, when the crew 
of the Endeavour made acquaintance with Otahito, some of 
’em did a bunk, thinking: ‘’‘No more England for us” 
But when I say that the savage is “ahead” don’t take me for 
a fool. Here is a river, the river of life’—he drew it in pen¬ 
cil on the table-cloth—‘and here is the sea to the East. Let 
the sea represent Happiness, Bliss and no end. Well, the 
river runs East to A, and at A is the savage; but then it 
winds back West toward B, and between A and B is the 
civilized: evidently A is nearer the sea, and so ahead of 
B, but B is further on nearer bliss, and so ahead of A. 
At B, as I pan it out, the river breaks into cataracts and 
rapids—revolution there—civilized man grabbing the planet’s 
crust out of the grasp of the foreign onlookers who now hold 
it, and thence the course toward Happiness may be rapid, and 
the savage soon be nowhere in comparison. The same may 
be true of the two minds—the conscious, and the sub-conscious. 
As life in becoming civilized, has lost something for a time, 
so, in becoming intelligent, it has lost something; dogs and 
horses are more psychic, or “sensitive,” as they say, than men, 
and will see an apparition quicker, and black men more than 
white men. But maybe when the river of Mind turns again 
toward the sea, men may be more psychic than any dog for 
being more intelligent, just as they will be all the more happy 
for being civilized. So I pan it out. Don’t look round sud¬ 
denly: one of the enemy has entered—the man at the table be¬ 
hind that lady with the diamond spray.’ 

“I glanced, and saw a young man, who might have been a 
Neapolitan count—handsome, but for his loutish, foul mouth. 
He was in talk with a gargon, and seemed to be thinking of 
anything but Rolls. 


18 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“‘One of the enemy,’ I said: ‘who are they? and—how do 
you know?’ 

“ ‘Agents of Macray,’ he answered, ‘who is out to get me, 
and it’s no chop when a rascal has power. How I know? 
By the movement of an eyelid. Besides, I live here, and so 
does yonder carrion-crow.’ 

“All this I found difficult to realize; and, reverting to the 
previous question, asked him if he was sure that the savage 
is the happier. 

“‘Down to the ground sure!’ was his answer: ‘your savage 
is likelier to die sudden, I admit: but you come with me to 
Basutoland, that belongs to the nation like the air, and for 
every rag and groan in Glasgow or Bethnal Green you will see 
a grin of gladsomeness, and a toe that dances. “Here,” the 

Barotse say, “hunger is not known.” Or come with me- 

Yes, I think I may tell you now of another country: Wo- 
Ingwanya—but don’t pronounce the “I,” Ngwanya say; the 
people are Wa-Ngwanya; one of them is a Mo-Ngwanya; their 
language is Se-Ngwanya. Far up country—South-Central Af¬ 
rica—not far from the Indian Ocean—“Children of the Ele¬ 
phant,” they call themselves, either because they are Zulu in 
origin, or because of an enormous rock, bigger than London, 
that stands on four low legs; but I in my own mind always call 
them “Children of the Wind,” because in those uplands the 
breezes of heaven don’t cease from streaming through their 
feathery head-dress, breathing upon their faces health and 
freshness—at least, they didn’t during the weeks I was there— 
and sometimes terrific tempests visit them. It is sixteen years 
since I first heard of that country, and then I heard one and 
another assert that no such country is on earth; ey, but there 
is that country, for not nineteen months gone I was in it with 
a caravan of negroid Arabs, and saw the men inlay metals—no¬ 
blest lot of blacks I’ve dropped upon. They trekked north, like 
Umzilikaze; but long before Chaka’s day—before any Zulu 
King whose name is known to us; yet are so conservative, that 
I could still drop to much of their lingo. Well, those darkies 



19 


ROLLS STABBED 

are in Paradise in comparison with St. Pancras—scream with 
laughter of heart in the face of sun and moon, their moochas 
of ox-tails and plumes of ostrich and saccaboola feathers, 
that stream on the breezes, seeming to scream with laughter, 
too—so long as they don’t get killed, look, by enemies, or by 
“our mother”—that’s their ruler: for she’s a devil of a despot. 
“Our mother” owns each inch of Wo-Ngwanya for her people, 
and is paid rent for it; no man may say “this acre is mine 99 ; 
and that’s where the laughter comes from, if I am a man that 
knows anything. Eh, but she’s a hot un, is “our mother”; 
I ought to know: the beggar sentenced me to death—ugliest 
bit of road Pve yet got over. If a Mo-Ngwanya girl slips, 
without “our mother’s” consent, that’s a sure case of “off with 
her head”—harsh, bloody. And who do you think “our 
mother” is?’—here Rolls laid his hand on mine, hard, with 
the knuckles whitened—‘You’d never guess; hear it now; girl 
of seventeen—eighteen by this time. White girl. Hear her 
name: Spiciewegiehotiu.’ 

“His voice had risen and risen, his eyes had brightened, and 
he uttered this procession of a name, ‘Spiciewegiehotiu,’ in 
such a crescendo of loudness, that most of the diners glanced 
our way. It seemed to be uttered in defiance and challenge, 
the defiance of one breaking through long restraint, for at the 
same time fire shot out of his eyes toward the Neapolitan- 
looking man seven yards away. Immediately afterwards he 
smiled on me, nodded, rose, and saying: ‘Back in two min¬ 
utes,’ walked away out. 

“A minute afterwards I saw the foreigner also saunter out. 

“Well, Rolls did not return in ‘two minutes’—I wished that 
he would, for just then I felt sick at my second ‘long Tom’ 
—horridly strong and raw—and presently I became aware of 
some commotion in the entrance-hall west of me—running 
feet, calls—so, among others, I hurried out to see, and there 
by the Office stood a mob, craning to see something in their 
midst, the hotel-people fussing about, begging them to stand 
back. 


20 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“I, being taller than most, soon caught sight of a form 
‘the enemy,’ the Neapolitan—lying unconscious, and one of 
the diners, probably a doctor, kneeling near, whom I heard 
say: ‘Only a faint—right arm broken’; and I understood 
that the injured must have been on the way to seek aid for his 
arm, but had fainted before reaching the portal. 

“Some moments afterwards my left eye caught sight of Rolls 
strolling in from the inner, south, salle, and saw him throw 
himself upon a lounge at the inner side of the entrance-hall. 

“When I went to him, I saw him rather pallid under his 
tan, rather scant of breath, and, showing me a dagger, he told 
me, ‘I went to the lavatory—thought myself alone—he stabbed 
me in the back with this—I cracked his arm.’ He showed 
me some blood on his fingers. 

“ ‘Come,’ I said, and led him toward the front, where a 
crowd and two constables were now watching the foreigner 
being carried into a cab for hospital; and Rolls I soon had 
in a cab for Essex Court, where, after ’phoning Dr. Hammond 
to come, I undressed Rolls; but the wound, an island in an 
ocean of tattooing, I at once saw to be of no importance, so 
’phoned Hammond not to bother, and dressed it myself. 

“‘But what about the legal aspect?’ I then said to Rolls: 
‘this is London in Europe.’ 

“ ‘Oh, the incident is ended,’ Rolls said, putting on his vest: 
‘it’s no chop my charging him, and he, you may bet, won’t 
charge me. May the stink-cats all catch it as hot, and may 
the devil get their master, his son.’ 

“I gave him to drink, and he stayed with me, telling tale 
after tale of venture and escape, funds of lore, till eleven, then 
went back to the hotel, saying he’d be at the aerodrome at two, 
I soon to hear more of his Spiciewegiehotiu, or ‘Hot Spice,’ 
as I called that lady, our mother. Rolls is a man, and not at 
all a bad sort.” 


Ill 


ROLLS LAID LOW 

T HE next day Cobby duly flew Rolls over London; after 
which the relation between the two became more estab¬ 
lished, Rolls spending several evenings at Cobby’s cham¬ 
bers, bringing along his own peach-brandy—for himself to 
sip, alcohol being not often good enough for Cobby; and it 
was when Cobby was one evening expecting Rolls for the fifth 
of these visits, that he heard his door-handle wrenched, his 
door slammed, and on rushing out to his hall, found Rolls 
there standing with his back to the door, short of breath, and 
blanched. 

“Hurt, Rolls?” Cobby cried out. 

“Don’t think so,” Rolls answered on a pant. “They got 
me on the stair—rushed me from No. 7 door. . . . Two I 
treated with the naked mauleys—the third chased me up—fired 
twice—air-gun—tore my sleeve, see—they wear silent shoes— 
I hadn’t time to draw. . . 

Indignant blood rushed to Cobby’s forehead. 

“JEe’ll do the attacking!” he cried, running in, to return 
with a small Colt’s. 

“You keep out of it”—Rolls held his sleeve. 

“This is intolerable!” Cobby said, with a florid forehead 
—“come on—rout ’em out.” 

But Rolls held him. “ They are under cover—it’s no chop 
fighting on ground chosen by the enemy. Wait—wary’s the 
word. I reckon they’ll be getting me in the end, but let that 
cost them something. . . . How would they have got into 
No. 7?” 


21 


22 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Cobby explained that No. 7 had been unoccupied, and must 
now have been taken by, or for, one of the gang; but com¬ 
plaint at the Inn-office the next day would rid the Temple of 
them. Meantime the police . . . 

But these, bespoken over the telephone, failed to find any¬ 
one at No. 7; and Cobby, nervous for Roll’s life, would not 
let him go; so Rolls, for the first time, slept that night in the 
chambers. 

That was the night of the 2nd August. 

On the night of the 7th, Rolls was “got,” as he would have 
said. 

Near nine he was walking up Essex Street—his usual route 
for Cobby’s—lonely at that hour, obscure at some points— 
when he was stabbed in the abdomen—mysteriously, for not 
a living thing did he see near him. Any nerve less trained 
in alertness than his, any adventurer less veteran in the trick 
and luck of escape, would doubtless have been laid dead at 
once; but something or other caused him suddenly to spring 
upward, and, instead of in the breast, he was hit below. 

He contrived to rise, to stagger and drag himself to the Tem¬ 
ple not far, to knock at Cobby’s “oak,” as formally as if noth¬ 
ing had happened. But as he knocked, he fell; and some 
moments afterwards, before the door was opened, Cobby, who 
had been out, darted up the stair, and there before the door 
saw the poor man prostrate in sorry case. Rolls sighed: “I 
think I’m done for.” 

The effect of this upon Cobby, who was hot-headed and 
full-blooded, was to cause him to dash into a passion at out¬ 
rages of this sort done in his own London; and he vowed 
vengeance. But for days Rolls could give no lucid account 
of what had taken place, the police appeared to be beaten, 
and no vengeance was taken. Indeed, during two whole days 
Rolls was delirious, the doctors anxious; but he was too tough 
a catgut to snap at one tug, and the days of danger passed. 

Soon after which he breathed feebly to Cobby: “Pve 


23 


ROLLS LAID LOW 

brought no end of a bobbery upon yo’u, haven’t I?—com¬ 
ing here. You were so much nearer—and I reckoned yo'u’d 
want me to.” 

“Good Rolls,” Cobby answered, pressing his hand, “that’s 
right: there’s no bobbery.” 

Cobby, busy as he was by nature, would stay an hour by the 
bedside, and himself help in Roll’s nursing, till the evening 
when Rolls was wheeled out to the work-room, when he said 
to Cobby: “Ay, I think I can drop now to it how they got 
me. From a motor-car. A rod running in sockets to 
push out, and a spike or two on the rod to stab with. ... I 
think I remember a car passing, and I distinctly remember 
making a spring: I must have caught half a glimpse of some¬ 
thing in the half-dark—I can’t swear. Well, in the end 
they’ll do me in, no doubt, since they’re so down on it.” 

“Miscreants!” Cobby muttered, running his fingers through 
the backwoods of his hair: “if we could do them in . . . But, 
as we seem unable to, you cut and run, Rolls. That will be 
horrible, if, when you get well, you are again--” 

“I have always stood up to my man so far,” Rolls said, 
“and am not for turning tail now. The worst of my trouble 
is that I’ve brought you, too, into it. Promise me now that 
you’ll not go out unarmed.” 

“That is foreign to me, Rolls,” Cobby answered, looking 
not unlike the boy in “Bubbles,” robed in a camel-hair dress¬ 
ing-gown, and launching into the air a bubble bigger than 
a trunk, a great globe of glories and glamours, gas-blown, 
he then experimenting on the surface-tension of bubbles at a 
lengthy table littered with a tangle of apparatus under bright 
lamplight: “I don’t want to go armed in God’s good Fleet 
Street, nor do I yet understand why these clowns should wish 
to meddle with me.” 

Reclined under a rug in a lounge-chair on the other side of 
the table, Rolls answered: “You see, they pan it out that 
I’ll never play it a lone hand, undertaking a trek to that coun- 


24 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

try so far in the interior without one white companion; and 
if Douglas Macray once reckons that you are wiring in with 
me, his cut-throats will sure be after you, too.” 

“But am I wiring in with you?” Cobby demanded. “You 
see that I have interests here.” 

With eyes trained sidewards upon him, Rolls watched a 
little that dainty handicraft before replying: “The thing’s 
worth doing. Seven millions sterling: of which I reckon 
upon one for me, and one for you, if we put it over.” 

“How? Tell me now,” said Cobby, pausing in the work 
to stand with his arms akimbo. 

And Rolls, after some hesitancy, remarked: “Nurse will 
be still asleep. . . . Very well, we’ll talk of that country. . . . 
You know that your mother’s two sisters married two brothers, 
Jane marrying James Macray, and Ismene marrying Rob 
Macray. Rob being considerably the elder, his rascal of a 
son, Douglas Macray, was nine or ten before James married 

your aunt Jane- I know the whole jimbang of it, for 

about then I was well in with James in the Witwatersrand, 
where he laid the foundations of his fortune. Rob, he never 
had much wealth—once went bankrupt in Chicago—and our 
swell Douglas Macray would be a nobody today, if he wasn’t 
in possession of somebody else’s money. Ay, somebody 
else’s, look—not his own—the money of Spiciewegiehotiu.” 

“Ah! Hot Spice,” went Cobby. 

“Hot spice—that’s pepper—is what she is. Eh, she’d have 
that rascal’s head off as sweet and clean-” 

“But how was it? Tell me.” 

“You remember the loss of the Florida?” 

“Let me see- Yes, yes, of course- I was eighteen— 

she vanished—my aunt Jane was lost-” 

“And your uncle-in-law, James Macray, and his daughter, 
your cousin, Flora Macray: the Florida being James Macray’s 
5,000-ton yacht, in which, with a party, he was globe-trotting, 
going to Japan; but after touching at Somaliland they were 
caught in one of those easterly Indian Ocean storms, to which 





ROLLS LAID LOW 


25 


they had to turn tail; and to this day the timbers of the wreck 
of that craft remain on the African coast, for I’ve seen them.” 

Cobby lowered himself to sit, saying: “I gather, then, that 
this Hot Spice is Flora Macray?” 

“That’s so. James Macray’s dollars, inherited by his 
brother Rob, and then by Rob’s son, Douglas, whose name, 
too, should be Rob, for ’tis his nature to—those dollars now 
being spent to murder me for knowing too much—are dollars 
of Spiciewegiehotiu, every cent, by her father’s will-” 

“He was drowned, then—and my aunt?” Cobby asked 
eagerly. 

“No, not drowned, I think. The Florida grounded inside 
a half-harbour, and probably all hands were saved. They 
were received, and not badly treated for some weeks, by 
Daisy, King of M’Niami, a man still alive, for I’ve done 
konza to him, and given the beggar ivory—this Daisy being 
the neighbour to the northeast of Spiciewegiehotiu, and now 
lives in terror of her sceptre and butting horns, though twelve 
years ago she was a kid of six in his hands, and with a wink 
he could have sent her to the kingdom of heaven. . . . Well, 
sir, after the Florida lot had been with Daisy some weeks, 
Daisy suddenly receives a request from the King of Wo- 
Ngwanya to hand over to him the white child then in Daisy’s 
great-place, in exchange for five hundred Wo-Ngwanya cattle. 
Now, this was an all-out rum request; and, as at that time 
Daisy’s M’Niami were considered a more powerful crowd than 
the Wa-Ngwanya, Daisy scratched his wool and demurred— 
couldn’t drop to what the bobbery was about! the real reason 
being, that a certain woman of the Wa-Ngwanya, named Man- 
daganya, had months before had some sort of premonition 
that a ‘lamb coming up out of the water’ would make Wo- 
Ngwanya great—that being what ‘Spiciewegiehotiu’ means , 
‘Lamb come up out of water.’ This Mandaganya, too, I 
know, by the way—a remarkable woman, I assure you—big, 
grand being—highly intelligent—and if ever there was a me¬ 
dium, or ‘sensitive,’ or ‘psychic,’ as you call ’em here, it is 



26 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

that woman. That woman has outraged the moral sense of 
all Wo-Ngwanya, all her fifteen children, except two, having 
different fathers—a capital offence there—yet her influence in 
the State remains immense, she being the chief of the College 
of Doctors—a triumph of personality. Her two children by 
one father are Sueela and a little brisk beast, sharp as a needle 
with two points, who is the executioner—a little ink-black 
beast whose limbs seem oiled, whose close acquaintance I 
almost made, by George. The flash of that falchion of his 
will have a head pitching away in one swift swish, and then, 
his right leg bent before him, his left leg stiff behind him, 
he’ll glance up sharp, as if asking everybody ‘how’s that for 
a wonner?’ and then the next, and the next—brisk as a flea! 
and his sister Sueela is Spiciewegiehotiu’s pet and weakness; 
sprig of seventeen, Sueela—ah! you must see Sueela— 

Venus, my boy- Venus is the thing’s name, not Sueela. 

Spiciewegiehotiu’s fondness for her is a scandal in Wo- 
Ngwanya, by the way, for Sueela’s mother, the inycmga, comes 
from the dregs of the people, so-” 

“But about the Florida people,” Cobby interrupted, glanc¬ 
ing at the clock. 

“Ay, that’s the point,” Rolls said: “pull me up when I get 
long-winded. I have a soft spot for that country, and no 

doubt am apt to gas about my memories of it- ‘Children 

of the Wind’ I name ’em, dwelling there in this twentieth cen¬ 
tury among the wrecks of a civilization ancient as Abraham, 
maybe—relics of pyramid, temple—and, the sweet winds that 
sweep them—I might do worse than sleep eternally under 
the turf of those uplands, if those that sleep can be hearing 
the breezes breathe through the trees at midday and at mid¬ 
night. But I was telling you—the King of Wo-Ngwanya, pan¬ 
ning it out that the white child at Daisy’s great-place was 
the ‘lamb come up washed out of the water,’ demands her of 
Daisy; Daisy, for his part-” 

But at this point a nurse looked in to claim Rolls, and 



ROLLS LAID LOW 


27 


would not be disobeyed. “Here’s another Spicey,” muttered 
Rolls, moving out with her, while another moon covered over 
with Constantinoples of topaz and opal floated aloft from 
Cobby’s bubble-blower. 


IV 


THE “CASTLE” LINER 

B UT during the two following nights, Cobby had from 
Rolls the whole story—how Daisy, King of M’Niami, 
refused to send the white child to Wo-Ngwanya, having 
been warned by the whites of the Florida that, if he separated 
the child from her parents, the white Knulu-knulu (great- 
great God) would be down upon him, whereas, if he refused 
to send her, all would go well with him. By this advice he 
was guided: whereupon, war—Wo-Ngwanya warning Daisy 
that, if one hair of the white lamb was harmed, then, the Wo- 
Ngwanya army, if victorious, would not fail to raze Daisy’s 
great-place to the ground. And Wo-Ngwanya was victorious: 
whereupon Daisy, in a passion of anger against the Florida 
unfortunates for their false prophecy, and for all the disaster 
it had brought upon his head, turned round and put them all 
to death, except the little one, whom, on capitulating, he 
handed over to Wo-Ngwanya. 

“Eh,” said Rolls to Cobby, “but that King of Wo-Ngwanya 
was cutting a stick for the back of his own royal house, look. 
Spiciewegiehotiu was no lamb come up out of any water— 
dragon more like—Macchiavelli—Napoleon—and proved one 
too many for that royal house. The prophecy of the inganya 
Mandaganya that ‘the lamb’ would make Wo-Ngwanya ‘great’ 
has proved abundantly true, for when Spicie entered it that 
country was no bigger than Bucks; now she can put into the 
field 180,000 of the brawest warriors—can and does put, for 
like a butting goat she has pushed and butted, north and east, 
and west, till that country may now make a map broader 


THE “CASTLE” LINER 


29 


than Wales. But her idea was to make Wo-Ngwanya great 
for herself and her ‘children,’ the Wa-Ngwanya, not for the 
reigning house; and she was not much over sixteen when 
her scheming and intriguing broke out in the deuce of a bob¬ 
bery. She got round the King, who now had cancer, to pro¬ 
claim her his President of the Council at a new-moon cere¬ 
mony; upon which two of the King’s three brothers, and his 
only son—a lad of nineteen—took flight by night with a troop 
of followers from Eshowe—that’s the royal kraal, or capital— 
in order to bring three regiments from the North upon Eshowe, 
seize the power, and get hold of Spiciewegiehotiu and Man- 
daganya, whose designs they were quite up to. Well, your 
troop of indunas gallop full bat through a night and day, 
they reach the regiments, they hold an indaba —that’s a debate 
—of officers in a forest at midnight, decide what to do, and to 
do it quick; and, as the indaba is about over, one of the as¬ 
sembly stands up, points at the princes, and commands, ‘ar¬ 
rest the traitors’—Spiciewegiehotiu, wrapped in an officer’s 
kaross, her face blackened; and with her her Sueela. She 
rode back to Eshowe at the head of one of the regiments, the 
three princes prisoners in its midst.” 

Cobby over his work murmured “efficient,” and Rolls 
dodged one of the bubble-worlds which Cobby constantly 
created and launched. 

“Ay,” Rolls said—“has a sense of the value of seconds, 
and will always be a minute ahead of her enemy. She had 
reached the three regiments only one half-hour before the 
princes, within which interval she had done a world of work 
and winning. The third of the King’s brothers, Dzinikulu, 
who related to me all this, told me that Sueela on her knees 
entreated Spiciewegiehotiu to kill the three princes there and 
then, but that Spicie, who always knows just how far she dares 
go at any juncture, and goes to the limit of that, but no far¬ 
ther, would not kill—bided her time. But she suffered for 
this: for soon afterwards she was poisoned—only scraped 
through by the skill of the doctoress, Mandaganya—and for 


30 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

two months it was as much as the sick King could do to keep 
Spiciewegiehotiu living—plot after plot. Then one midnight 
the King dies; Spicie still sick from poison; and quick the 
four princes rush, silently invest the sigodhlo—that’s the 
royal enclosure—with troops that they have waiting ready, 
so to make sure of Spiciewegiehotiu. And now they look 
through the sigodhlo for Spicie, they ransack it: no Spicie. 
Spicie has fled, Sueela fled, Mandaganya fled—gone by a little 
back-way in the very nick of time. The princes give chase; 
scour the country; they cannot drop upon Spiciewegiehotiu. 
A rumour comes to them that Spicie has fled northeast to the 
garrison brigades on the M’Niami frontier, and is marching 
against them, with a force of 12,000 assegais; on which, with 
overwhelming numbers, they rush to encounter and crush 
these regiments. But while butting about, looking for this 
force, they come to know that it has given them the slip, and 
is now with Spiciewegiehotiu at the great-place, Eshowe, to¬ 
gether with other forces. Back to Eshowe they rush, to crush 
her there. When they arrive in sight of Eshowe, at ten in the 
night, they see it all a sea of torches it sends o'ut to them a 
sound of carousing, of shield-beating, and drum-beating, danc¬ 
ing and fal-lals. They become aware that Spiciewegiehotiu 
has that evening been proclaimed Queen of Wo-Ngwanya: 
and they prepare to invest and besiege Eshowe. Meantime, 
hundreds on hundreds of emissaries are being sent out from 
Eshowe to their regiments, by Spiciewegiehotiu, with messages 
—let them not beseige Eshowe—let them march in—are not 
the gates flung wide for them? Let them come and kill her, 
let them come and kill the white lamb washed come up from 
the water, let them come and kill Wo-Ngwanya, let them come 
and kill the mother and luck of the Wa-Ngwanya—is not her 
bosom bared? bared are the young mother-breasts that suckle 
them—let them come and pierce it with hundreds of spear- 
points, that they may feel like sons and heroes. And the 
fakement works all right. As you know bubbles and sub¬ 
atoms, so she knows her Wo-Ngwanya, and can move the 


THE “CASTLE” LINER 


31 


mass of it with her finger, as a chit’s touch launches a ship. 
Though she has her forces posted out of sight about the 
town to pounce upon the enemy, if necessary, it isn’t neces¬ 
sary, for, as the princes’ impi marches upon Eshowe, the 
populace of Eshowe swarm out to call and talk to it; it thaws, 
dissolves, and walks off like waters and in a frantic scene 
of timbrels and dancing, breast clutched to brother’s breast, 
it enters the gates of Eshowe to the great square, at the top 
of which Spiciewegiehotiu sits throned within a glare and 
smoke of flambeaux, tired and sick and pallid, but smiling, 
seeing prostrate before her feet the manhood of Wo-Ngwanya, 
hearing howled to heaven from ten thousand throats the roar 
‘Bayete! — Sovereign!’ And in the midst of it the princes— 
for the second time—her prisoners.” 

Now Cobby paused to stare, and suddenly muttered again: 
“Efficient, that chit.” 

“Ay,” said Rolls—“and now she saw herself strong enough 
to strike. After a trial that lasted ten days, a trial on which 
the entire nation hung in a hush of suspense, she sentenced 
to death three of the four princes, reprieving only, from some 
motive of policy, Dzinikulu, the late King’s third brother. 
After the trial, tears, entreaties, warnings, were poured out 
before her by chiefs and headmen to win her to spare the 
princes; but Spiciewegiehotiu was deaf to them all, and, as 
that brisk little beast, Sandelikatze, Sueela’s brother, the ex¬ 
ecutioner, swished off the three heads, and glanced up sharp, 
asking ‘how’s that?’—I’ve seen the beast—a howl of dismay 
went up from Eshowe, seeing that flow of great-great gore, 
and like one man Wo-Ngwanya clapped hand to mouth at it, 
and stood dumb. The Wa-Ngwanya are pretty fickle, emo¬ 
tional and touchy; and there were some local insurrections, 
which Spiciewegiehotiu did not crush, but, by quickly pick¬ 
ing a quarrel with Sebingwe, a King to the northwest, and 
quickly declaring war, turned the thoughts of everybody from 
the internal bobbery. And ever since it has been drill, drill, 
and war, war, with her; nor she don’t sit still at Eshowe and 


32 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

send out her impis: under her eye they fight, with her 
strategy-” 

“Bloody young person,” Cobby observed. 

“Public-spirited, / call it,” Rolls replied. “She don’t con¬ 
sider that she is there for the good of humanity, look, but for 
her ‘children,’ who pay her—is there to make them happy and 
top-dog; and there’s no end to her public-spiritedness, to her 
devotion to the Wa-Ngwanya, to the anxiety of her forehead 
for them.” 

“She has quite a hero-worshipper, Rolls,” Cobby remarked 
with a smile. 

“Well, no doubt I am a bit shook on the girl, though I ought 
to hate the beggar-” 

“Why, then, did she sentence you?” 

“Only for proposing to her to let me bring her to Europe— 
nothing more. She seems, by the way, to have as strong a 
colour-prejudice against us whites as her father probably had 
against niggers—as good as told me so in four English words 
—and very strange it was suddenly to hear that English ut¬ 
tered in Wo-Ngwanya—while I stood before her judgment- 
seat: up she cocks one eye, trying to remember English, and 
then, wrinkling up her nose, says she: ‘Hwhite—mans—is— 
stink.’ The retort leapt to my mouth, ‘And what about white 
girls? They’re worse’—eh, but R. K. Rolls was too old a 
fowl, thank God, to give it tongue. Ay, she had me in chokey 
six bitter days under sentence of death inside a continent of 
a rock that they call ‘The Elephant’; and what do you think 
saved me? Seven matches—the last I had. An inspiration 
came to me to send them as a present, and they so fascinated 
her, that she let me off, but banished me, commanding me 
never more to set foot in Wo-Ngwanya.” 

“I see—you proposed to bring her to civilization,” Cobby 
said: “you had discovered that she is Flora Macray. How 
had you?” 

“Oh, everything proved it. She remembered the name of 
the Florida, the name ‘Flora,’ though not the name ‘Macray.’ 




THE “CASTLE” LINER 33 

I told her I had known her father, and she showed me his 
rohoto in a locket—there’s no doubt. Of course, I saw at once 
that there was big money in it—as well as justice—if I could 
get her home: for if I could make her sign to tip me one mil¬ 
lion out of seven, that would be fair-” 

“But when you offered her the lion’s share, she forced upon 
you the ‘Elephant’s’ portion,” Cobby put in. 

“Ho! Well put,” Rolls cried—“that’s how it pans out. 
However, I was no sooner out of Wo-Ngwanya, with my head 
still on, than I was playing to get her yet, and, when next in the 
Witwatersrand, I set about getting together an expedition to 
kidnap my lady. But I blabbed—a bit. Funds being low 
just then, I approached Schartz, the financier—didn’t let on 
where that country lies, you may bet, but I ( let out *Florida ’ 
let out ‘Flora Macray.’ Schartz he had vowed to be mum, but 
I now know that he was in with the Douglas Macray crowd; 
and a hint of the fakement actually got into the Cape Times. 
He suggested to me to sell my knowledge to the enemy, and lie 
low ever after, mentioned £20,000, and when I wouldn’t look 
at it, he steered off, the expedition looked sick, and, to top it 
all, I found myself with Douglas Macray’s knife in me. His 
arm, reaching from Paris, just nearly made me a deader one 
evening in the Johannesburg Exchange Bar. It was then that 
I said to myself: ‘Cobby!’” 

Cobby rushed his fingers through his leonine bush of hair, 
shook his head rather irritably. “Leave me out of it, Rolls. 
I—can’t. Beside this surface-tension of bubbles, I am count¬ 
ing the droplets in vapour-clouds with Stokes; and, then, the 
Government- No, no, leave me out.” 

“Still, you are coming slowly round, I can see,” Rolls re¬ 
marked with a twinkle. 

“I am— not. Rolls,” said Cobby. 

“You don’t want me to be assassinated in a London street— 
that’s why.” 

“No, that’s true, I don’t, I don’t.” 

“Therefore, you’ll come. What’s the good of bubbles? 



34 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

This is solid cash, this proposition—not bubbles. With a mil¬ 
lion of Spiciewegiehotiu’s money in your bank, you could blow 
bubbles as big as this building. And, then, justice, Cobby. 
Your cousin. Isn’t it a duty?” 

Bent over his work-table, after a while Cobby replied: “I 
don’t see that it is a duty to kidnap any one. The girl is free, 

and if she doesn’t want- Moreover, my head is of some 

value, apparently; I am not anxious to have it hacked off by 
the little brisk man who glances up and asks ‘how’s that?’ ” 

“/’ll look after your head,” remarked Rolls. 

“What would have become of your own, if you had had no 
matches?” Cobby demanded; “I hope they were safety 
matches: they deserved that name.” 

“Ho!” broke out of Rolls, in whom laughter was a rare and 
a volcanic event. . . . “Oh, Jimmy! the wound hurts when I 
laugh.” 

“I make painful jokes, I see,” Cobby remarked, on which 
yet another “Ho!” broke out of Rolls in a pain of explosion. 

Then Cobby’s grandfather’s-clock struck eleven; his man 
bore in a supper, consisting mostly of bread and cheese—for 
so Cobby lived—and, as they sat at table, he asked of 
Rolls; “But is she—fair at all to look upon, this minx, my 
cousin?” 

“Spiciewegiehotiu is a beauty,” Rolls solemnly asserted. 

“She is- Did your mother’s family, by the way, have 

black hair?” 

“Dark. My mother’s was black.” 

“So is Spicie’s. Looks Spanish to me rather—staid face— 

pale, strong-boned, grave- I’ve seen her laugh merrily, 

but never saw her smile. Sits leaning sideways, her finger- 
joints at her cheek—steady eyes, meditating on you, judging, 
dark-blue—noble brow, for though you can’t see much of it 
for the two wings of hair that cover it, there’s a lane between 
the wings, running up the side of the brow where the hair¬ 
parting is, and at that lane you can spy the noble height and 
bulge of the brow; and the hair puffs over the ears, which 



THE “CASTLE” LINER 


35 


puff may be what makes her Spanish-looking. And her sweet 
lips, boy, neatly fitted together, a little pressed—rose-leaves 
may be something like them—not red ones, pink ones—but I 
can’t tell of the winningness and pull of ’em-” 

“Why, Rolls!” Cobby cried, “this is love.” 

“I wish she’d returned it, then. I shouldn’t have been off 
bussing those particular lips. But no go: white mans is stink. 
Maybe for a cousin she’d feel different, Cobby: for they say 
that some cousins are more akin in nature than brother and 
sister.” 

“Really? People say that of cousins? I am surprised, 
because it happens to be true—scientifically known. But all 
that does not allure me, Rolls. You see that I have other pre¬ 
occupations than the lips of ladies.” 

To which Rolls, sipping his peach-brandy, confidently an¬ 
swered: “You never felt the sun, old man: wait till you do, 
before you boast. Here the sun is a hearsay, as toothache is to 
one who hasn’t it; but the sun’s a Reality, look, and no fun. 
You’ve read of the rage of the vegetation of African forests: 
well, the same with Master Cupid; a dog in the sun bites the 
boy, and the boy goes dog-mad.” 

“Oh, it is all a question of mental pose and habit,” Cobby re¬ 
marked with a pout. “The mind cannot think of two things 
at the same time-” 

“Exactly!” cried Rolls. “And the sun insists that you think 
of it, and quit bubbles. If you say ‘No’ to it, it says ‘Very 
good; there’s no hurry, tomorrow will do.’ ” 

At which Cobby chuckled, roaring out in his big voice: 
“And this is what you propose to me!—to transform myself 
from a blower of bubbles into a blower of sighs! Stash the 
fakement, Rolls, as you say.” 

But Cobby had been, and was being, more influenced by 
Rolls than he admitted to himself, and three nights later was 
influenced still more by an event. 

That midnight he was walking home from a scientific func¬ 
tion at the Holborn Restaurant, and, after passing through 



36 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Lincoln’s Inn Fields, had descended some steps behind the Law 
Courts, going down into the lane of Clement’s Inn, where it 
was dingy and desolate, when three men, who had on masks, 
appeared before him; and cried one, presenting a revolver: 
“You were warned, Cobby! Up with the hands!” 

Cobby did nothing of the sort. Hot-headed as ever, he sent 
at the man a blow that staggered him, and had actually felled 
the second, before he was struggling with the third. As this 
third and he dropped together, he cut the hand of this one with 
a lancet, and, reaching out, cut the hand of the second, too, 
who was still half-prostrate. 

Their object, apparently, had been just to strike terror into 
him, for when all were again on their legs, instead of any 
shooting, there was a foolish pause, while the two cut ones 
glanced at their hands, and Cobby touched a bump on his 
forehead, until on panting breaths Cobby said: “Now, look 
here—just yonder is King’s College Hospital: run to it, you 
two—tell them you’ve been cut with a septic lancet, or you 
are likely to have your arms off.” 

The three looked at one another. 

“C’est la blague remarked the non-cut to the cut. 

“It is not blague Cobby said, suddenly walked away, and 
was not followed. 

All in a flush he reached his chambers, indignant, dominant; 
and, as he broke into the room where Rolls under his rug 
awaited his coming, words burst from him. “Well, I have de¬ 
cided, Rolls. I go with you. . . .” 

“Good talk!” breathed Rolls astare. 

“I’ve been attacked”—he told the story of it. 

Rolls snapped finger and thumb. “Good luck! They reck¬ 
oned to scare you off, that’s it—and have done the other thing! 
They don’t know their Cobby, the blackguards!” 

“Very good, it is settled, we tackle it, we two. How long 
will it take?” 

“Eighteen months.” 

“Oh, a year, say! We go armed, you know.” 


THE “CASTLE” LINER 


37 


“Well, of course, we go-” 

“I don’t mean with guns—with Science—with civilization— 
motors, accumulators, aeroplanes-” 

“Oh, I say!” went Rolls, “that’s hardly orthodox, to spring 
aeroplanes upon Wo-Ngwanya. Still, there’s no reason-” 

“Oh! we go fully armed, Rolls, to meet every eventuality. 
Time! Time! In which case, say a year.” 

“Let’s hope it, anyway. A million a year—not bad for 
R. K. Rolls!” 

Cobby, who now stood pondering, all at once asked what 
was Douglas Macray’s address. 

“Hotel Meurice, rue de Rivoli,” said Rolls, “or just ‘Paris’ 
will do. But—why?” 

Without answering Cobby sat at his escritoire, and wrote: 
“Mr. Warren Cobby is about to start on the quest of his 
cousin, Flora Macray”—and at once, having summoned his 
man, sent it to the post; on which, with a look of alarm, Rolls 
suddenly asked: “You haven’t written to Macray?” 

Cobby told what he had written. 

“Well—but-” Rolls said. “Myself, I’d never see fit to 

forewarn the enemy.” 

“Miscreant! The insolent licence- Well, now he has 

my challenge.” 

Rolls shrugged. Challenges, flourishes, moral ebullitions 
were hardly his style, but the plain way toward an end; and in 
the next three weeks, while preparations were under way, 
and Cobby tearing himself out of his place in civilization, 
Rolls’ unimaginative sense had enough to do to check the 
other’s excess of zest and effort. “Our money won’t run to 
it,” he would say: “we don’t aim to be an invading army with 
baggage, look. There’s no chop any road in bringing arc- 
lamps and galignite, telephone-sets and nitrotoluol. . . .” 

“To have done it, and be done with it, Rolls,” Cobby said: 
“to be back here in Fleet Street, doing surface-tension! If 
we go, we go as white men, armed with the white man’s wit and 
might—not with seven matches.” 





38 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Rolls flung his hand. “Well, there may be something in it. 
Go your own road.” 

Hence, on the day of departure, cartfuls of paraphernalia 
lay stored for the expedition within that belly of the Saxon. 
To watch all snugly stored, Rolls, hardly yet quite on his 
legs, had been aboard some hours, and Cobby, at the eleventh 
hour, was walking alone with quick steps toward the ship along 
the dockside, pulled askew by a bag, when a voice said behind 
him: “Carry your bag, sir?” 

“Very good”—he gave it to a tall man, loose-limbed, shaven, 
dark-haired, wearing a cloth cap, and rough clothes that 
looked new. 

And, as they walked together along the dock-railway, said 
Cobby: “Where have I seen you before?” 

On which the man chuckled, saying: “Not at Buckingham 
Palace, I’m afraid, sir.” 

When they reached the bustle of the ship, now shouting 
“visitors ashore,” Cobby at once lost sight of him; but four 
evenings later, out in the Bay of Biscay, on wandering with 
“The Zulu-Kaffir Language” into the bow-regions, to watch the 
bow-foams wash and dash, he beheld the same man there, lean¬ 
ing over the rail among some steerage-passengers. 

Cobby addressed him, with “So you, are here.” 

On which the man touched his cap with a chuckle. “Yours 
as ever, sir,” he said. 

But there was some difference now about the man somehow, 
in air, or face. Cobby, just aware of a difference, could not 
say in what it lay—was not interested. 


V 


THE VOLUNTEER 

B EFORE Madeira was passed, Rolls had become an in¬ 
stitution in the ship. He liked winds in his hair, and 
dismal nights, when he had the vessel and the universe 
to himself, and sometimes the saloon-dinner was his breakfast, 
he was such a night-fowl, scarcely mixing with the others— 
differing from Cobby, who let himself be led into whist-drive, 
sweepstake, saloon-ball and nonsense-talk under the quarter¬ 
deck awning. Cobby’s name as a scientist having been known 
to two or three beforehand, as he saw himself sought after, he 
lent himself. But he wrote in his diary: “This is dreadful! 
This emptiness and waste of days. But what idle people! 
and, I as idle as any of them. May Spiciewegiehotiu per¬ 
ish. . . 

A voyage to the monotony of whose routine the engines’ 
throbbing beat its monotonous baton, until the eighteenth 
night, or nineteenth morning say, when Cobby in his sleep had 
a feeling that he was not alone, and woke in a flurry to find 
the ship pitching, and there on his bedside, when he switched 
on the light, Rolls seated, gravely meditating on a cigar be¬ 
tween his fingers, wind from a porthole winnowing within his 
bare hair. 

“I’m not sorry you’ve woke up,” he said. “Myself, I always 
sleep with my state-room locked, and you should ditto. 
There’s an enemy aboard, look.” 

A new idea for Cobby. “How do you arrive at that?” 
“Just played it on me,” Rolls answered—“narrowest es¬ 
cape! I all but disappeared over the side—‘suicide whilst of 

39 


40 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

unsound mind.’ On blowy nights I generally go up the fore¬ 
mast shrouds, to have things to myself a bit—was up there a 
couple of hours—rough stuff—dark—then got down. When I 
stepped upon the lowest ratlins, they weren’t ratlins any more 
—cut through. Feet pitched overboard, dragging off my hand¬ 
hold ; my clutches missed one, two, of the upper ratlins—didn’t 
miss the third, or I should be well astern by now. But if 
you’re born to be hanged, you never will be drowned.” 

“Incredible licence!” breathed Cobby. “Who can it be?” 

“There you beat me—though I expected he’d not be far, and 
have been on the look-out to spot him. Anyway, here he is.” 

“And are the ratlins of fibre or wire?” 

“Wire-rope those foremast ones.” 

“Then he must have a hack-saw. We will report to the 
captain, and have a search-” 

Rolls threw his hand. “Of course, the captain will know; 
but that says nothing. The bottom of the Atlantic is a fine 
place to hide a hack-saw—if he didn’t nick it from the ship’s 
chest, to put back after using. . . .” 

This thing sensationalized the last three days of the voyage 
for every one—an eruption in the uninterrupted. 

Only one man—a steerage passenger—did not appear in the 
assembly before the captain in the saloon: him the doctor re¬ 
ported to be ill—had pharyngitis—inflammation of the mouth 
-—had to be interviewed separately in his bunk. 

“Which of them would that be?” Rolls asked himself. 

Knowing all the faces present, and unable to recall the ab¬ 
sent face, he conceived a curiosity to see it, and the next morn¬ 
ing took down a bottle of “bub” (rum-and-milk), in a neigh¬ 
bourly way to the sick one—“something to keep the blues out, 
friend.” 

He was warmly thanked with nods, but no words the sick 
mouth being covered with a cloth, the brow bound about with 
a towel, so that, as it was dim within the bunk, Rolls got only a 
dim impression of a nose. 

Nor was there time to repeat the visit: now loomed on the 


THE VOLUNTEER 


41 


ocean’s brink that bluff bulk of Table Mountain, with a table¬ 
cloth of cloud, and silver dish-covers of cumulus-mounds, the 
mass of which, Rolls told Cobby, recalled to him “The Ele¬ 
phant” of Wo-Ngwanya; and soon, as the liner warped up, all 
was an arrival-scene of greetings and luggage, tips and kisses, 
pith-helmets with pugarees swinging, sunshades and white at¬ 
tire fluttering, all in a colonial tone of its own, dotted with va¬ 
rious shades of blackness trotting to and fro, from Hottentot 
copper to Madagascar blacking; and here Rolls was sweetly at 
home, Cobby following in his wake from quayside through 
custom’s officer to dock-gates, asking of Rolls in respect of the 
Malay who drove them to Cape Town, “Why does the being 
vociferate so needlessly?” to which Rolls philosophically an¬ 
swered: “Has a fare—sort of song of joy that he blows off, 
look, like the hylobates ape: let him howl away.” 

And when the sun sank, and sudden darkness invaded Na¬ 
ture, said Cobby, thinking again of his Malay: “We might 
have done well to travel in our cab, which was as breezily 
speedy as the train is lazy. How long, Rolls, before the ex¬ 
pedition actually starts out?” 

Rolls said: “Three weeks, I reckon.” 

“Ah! three weeks. . . . Well, provided I am back in Fleet 
Street in a year—that is your undertaking.” 

Rolls’ eyes twinkled. “No, not undertaking. You wait— 
you won’t be so fidgety when Africa once gets its grip on you. 
Even this Karoo seems to you now a meaningless reach of 
plain, doesn’t it?—no trees, nothing—yet it has a meaning of 
its own—says something, sings something. Hark! heard that 
cry? A riet-bok that is, out there in the vastness and darkness 
—never saw a train before: I know it from the way he 
whistled. He’s living still away back in the bottomless pit of 
the geologic ages, that chap: all this Africa is. Wait till you 
see a geologic river washing solemn along, with the hippo’s 
nostril snorting out in the choppy mid-channel: he’s pretty 
old and knowing, that cove. But, of course, we’ll be looking 
as lively as we know how: let’s only hope we’re not crossed 


42 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

and balked any road, for the enemy has a long arm. I’m all- 
out gallied now about not getting to see that sick man’s face 
aboard. I wonder what’s wrong with his mouth?—‘inflamed 
mouth’: never heard of that disease in man. I looked out at 
the landing, but no sign of him.” 

Snuggled in a corner, his eyes closed to the world, Cobby 
murmured: “I think I know who he is—saw him first in 
England. Some poor man—carried my bag along the dock.” 

“And was anything wrong with his mouth then?” 

“Let me see- Yes, I fancy now that he spoke with 

some impediment or effort.” 

When Rolls next spoke, he got no answer: Cobby was 
asleep. 

Then by way of the corrugated townlet, past the rock-kopie, 
the stead of the Boer alone in the world with his ostrich-kraal, 
the journey was to the Goldtown, where at once Rolls threw 
himself into the work of getting together map and plan, man 
and automatic, inspan and biltong, bead and button, medicine- 
chest and waggon-box. And all went merrily well, save at one 
point—the sweeping-in of at least one other white, for which 
he was eager. He got two, indeed, but both failed him. 

The first, a transport-rider of Natal, a fellow of grit, though 
addicted to “square-face,” and now down on his luck, readily 
agreed, said to Rolls, “The thing I’m after—a dart into the 
interior,” and a bargain was struck. But soon afterwards 
Rolls, on entering Botha’s Yard in Commissioner Street, where 
the waggons were, spied his transport-rider head-to-head in a 
confab with a broker: and the next day the fellow vanished. 

It was the same with the second, a Texan—Kimberley adven¬ 
turer, up-country hunter, who dreamed in millions, though to¬ 
day broken in boots—he had all but fixed-up with Rolls, but 
then cooled off, and when he suddenly began to throw money 
about, Rolls understood that this one, too, had been soaped. 

“They’re at us again,” Rolls said, when Cobby got back from 
a trip to a vlei up north, whither two mining-engineers had 
taken him to shoot veldt-duck and antelope. “They reckon 



THE VOLUNTEER 


43 


I’m too wide-awake and chock-full of six-shooters to be 
knocked out from a corner over here, where I’m a cock in my 
own yard; but they aim now to make us a pair of lone hands 
among a crowd of blacks-” 

“It doesn’t seem to me of great importance,” Cobby re¬ 
marked. 

“Blacks do such things as mutiny, don’t they?” Rolls de¬ 
manded. 

“Well, there are still three days to try in. If you come 
across any possible man, strike hands with him on the spot, 
then send him out of the town beyond temptation.” 

Which was what Cobby himself did on the following eve¬ 
ning; for, as he was smoking on his hotel stoep, the light of 
day then dying out, a man appeared before him—the man 
whom he had seen at the dock in England, and then on the 
liner; and said the man: “Here we are again, sir! I got it 
from a certain party that you are after a white for up-country 
trekking, and I’m in it, if you’ll have me—stones, gold, ivory, 
makes no matter to me.” 

“Sit down. . . . When did you come to Johannesburg?” 

“Only yesterday. Been in Cape Town.” 

“What brought you to South Africa?” 

“You should ask what took me to England. I know South 

Africa—Australia. Fortune-hunter- I haven’t always 

carried gentlemen’s bags for a bob.” He chuckled. 

“You can shoot, then, probably.” 

The man snatched a revolver from his hip-pocket, and negli¬ 
gently shot a peach from a tree in the yard. 

“Good in this half-light”—Cobby presented some vegueras 
-—“have a cigar.” 

“Thanks—I’m in misery—can’t smoke-” 

“Not well yet?” 

“Better—not well. You hear how I talk—across a hot po¬ 
tato.” 

“Yes, I can tell that there is something. Healthy other¬ 
wise?” 



44 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“Oh, yes, I’m all there.” He chuckled. 

“Talk Zulu?” 

“Some. Can cluck some Hottentot, too.” 

“Well, come inside: I’ll send for my partner, Mr. Rolls, 
and we’ll discuss details.” 

But Rolls, sent for, could not be found; and Cobby, appre¬ 
hensive lest this one also should be got at, struck a bargain, 
asking, as he wrote a contract: “What is your name?” 

“Douglas Macray.” 

Cobby’s pen paused in air. Looking at the man, he mut¬ 
tered, “Singular”; and added with a smile: “You are not, I 
take it, the millionaire of that name?” 

“W-e-11, I’m afraid not, if there is such a millionaire. But 
never say die, sir! I may yet stand in his shoes.” 

Now, frowning in an effort of memory, Cobby asked: 
“Where have I seen you before? Somewhere 

“Dartmoor jail, sir.” He chuckled. 

“No, I never was there. You?” 

“Well, no—not actually inside. I wouldn’t say that the 
traps have never been after me, but they never yet got me.” 

Cobby smiled on him—liked a certain hardihood, stoicism, 
and cheery frankness which was about him. 

“Well, sign,” he said, and, this done, wrote a letter to a Boer 
at whose stead he had slept during his hunting-trip, a letter of 
no importance in itself, only written in order to get Macray, 
who was to take it, out of reach of schemers. “We others will 
perhaps have started before you get back,” he said, “but you 
will readily pick up our spoor. Here’s the cash; and now I 
will come with you to the yard.” 

There Cobby saw him horsed and off, then walked back to 
his hotel, wondering what had become of Rolls. 

It was not till an hour later that Rolls came in, looking sour, 
to tell the tale that, having gone with one of the Square auc¬ 
tioneers to drink a bottle of fizz, they both had got impris¬ 
oned in a room—something gone wrong with the catch of the 
door, which in the end had had to be forced. 


THE VOLUNTEER 


45 


In view of which odd disease of the door-catch, when Cobby 
told of the bargain with the man whose mouth was sore, Rolls’ 
countenance fell. 

“My God, Cobby,” he said ruefully, “you might have waited 
for me to crop up.” 

“Why, though?” Cobby asked. 

Rolls had no answer; but felt ill at ease. 

“And what do you think his name is?” asked Cobby. 

“Beelzebub—I shouldn’t wonder,” said Rolls, strolling 
about. 

“Douglas Macray.” 

“Same thing as Beelzebub,” said Rolls. . . . “But you mean 
to say he had the devil’s cheek to give you that name?” 

“Oh, no cheek, I think; that chances to be the fellow’s name: 
he’s all right.” 

“Well, you’re the newest of new chums, and no mistake! 
Haven’t you learned yet to mistrust your man, Cobby?” 

“The man is all right,” Cobby obstinately repeated. 

And, as arranged, the expedition duly started the next after¬ 
noon; but not till nine in the night, when it had outspanned 
twenty miles up in the interior, did Macray with new hunter’s- 
swag and outfit ride in; on which Rolls and he, for the first 
time, looked into each other’s eyes. 


VI 


A QUESTION OF TEETH 

T HE three were eating an evening meal after the after¬ 
noon sweat and trek through leagues of timber, when 
Cobby remarked: “Here we are within sight nearly, 
and the plan of action still undetermined”—a browner Cobby, 
upon whom some beard had sprouted, in moleskin trousers 
now, and leggings above velschoenen, upon which the bivouac- 
fire shed beams in a dimness that was an island of dimness 
within the dismal Pacific of the night. 

Rolls began to answer: “Well, we have the rough plan”— 
but paused, suddenly adding: “Another fight on!—that’s the 
utskwala (millet-grog) working,” and, springing up, he trotted 
off into a still dimmer dimness, where a little mob stood watch¬ 
ing a Swahili and a Pondo duelling with two club-sticks in the 
midst of a bigger mob, who lolled and squatted, enjoying the 
day’s end, and at that lip the calabash tilted, and that puffed 
at the hashish (“dakka”) pipe, and that snub-nose sucked up 
snuff. 

Rolls stamped at the fighters: “Stash that racket!” but still 
the two kerries acted, rattling anon like castanets, and the 
clattering antlers of antagonist stags rattling together. 

Only when Rolls, roaring at them anew, drew his revolver, 
did the duel consent to stop, and then the Pondo dropped 
something at the Swahili’s ear, to which the Swahili consented 
with nods, so that Rolls understood that the feud was still to be 
settled elsewhere. 

“Silly brutes,” he grumbled, sitting anew to his tin plate: 
“we can’t afford to have ’em cracking one another’s skulls up 

46 


47 


A QUESTION OF TEETH 

here”—for just “here” was cannibal, there had been two 
pitched laager-battles, flow of blood, and the sentries standing 
out in the dark now about the bivouac were not there for 
nothing. 

“Well, you were saying-” Cobby said, mopping his 

forehead and a chest all exposed at the opening of his dirty 
shirt, the sleeves rolled up. 

“It’s only details that remain over,” Rolls answered, casting 
an under-glance at Macray, who lay on his elbow, eating with 
evident effort and unease: “the dart is to get within the three 
enclosures one dark night, chloroform ‘our mother,’ and 
bring her off like a sack of mealies.” 

“You’ll never put that over,” Macray observed. 

“With your help we will,” Rolls answered, with a sullen 
eye askance on him. 

“Well no doubt I’m a host in myself,” Macray chuck¬ 
led, ever jocular, in spite of pain. 

Now Cobby irritably loosed his belt with its sheaf-knife and 
six-shooter holster, saying: “But are you aware that the ad¬ 
ministration of chloroform occasionally ends fatally, and that 
we have no right-” 

“Oh, now for a London sermon!” Rolls muttered intoler¬ 
antly—tempers here not being at their best! for God caused a 
mist to rise up out of the ground, a steam of miasma and 
malarias, good for snakes and the great venom-insects that 
came sailing in gay dress out of the tangle of undergrowth to 
glare at the flame and dance devil-dances to it, but bad for 
man. 

“May I not express myself?” Cobby asked, glancing aside 
at Rolls, who sat by him, his back propped upon the same mass 
of banyan-trunk that had dropped there a century gone, to 
gather its scab of mosses and rot with all the rot of the tropic 
forest, within which, side by side, vied riot of corruption and 
riot of life, and the tribes of life thrived on the festering of 
the unburied dead. 

“How many people die of chloroform, old man?” demanded 


48 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Rolls. “One in a million? And what are we here for but to 
take a thousand bigger risks?” 

“Very good,” said Cobby. “I concede the chloroform— 
let that pass. But there will be sentries round the royal pre¬ 
cincts? How about them?” 

“We stab the sentries, baas,” Macray said, looking at Cobby 
with one eye winked. 

“There’ll be only four or five,” Rolls said. “Shoot ’em 
with air-guns—or stab.” 

Now Cobby frowned. “That is,” said he, “we become assas¬ 
sins.” 

“Put it that road,” Rolls curtly said. 

“Very good,” said Cobby hotly, “be an assassin, if that is to 
your taste—on the understanding that you never shake my 
hand after.” 

Macray chuckled; and Rolls sullenly said: “We’ll rub 
along without much shaking hands—just do a bow, look,” and, 
doffing his opulent hat, he bowed elegantly to the forest, to 
show how elegantly he and Cobby would bow together. 

“I am in earnest, understand,” Cobby mentioned, in the act 
of lighting a pipe, and Rolls then said, patting his friend’s 
arm: “Hamba gachle (go soft) : nothing is going to be done 
that you don’t cotton to—not likely! We’ll have a regular 
indaba (debate,), and see how it pans out.” 

He finished eating, drank, lit a cigar, and in that reign of 
stillness they two smoked together under a gloom of foliage 
hung with bugle-blooms of blue and ruby, with festoons of 
bindweed, barbarous triumphs of beard, while anon a baobab- 
fruit fell with a knell’s message, or a branch crashed, or a mon¬ 
key rushed with shrieks, a hyena pealed the laughter of mad¬ 
ness afar, a mule smote a hoof, or a laugh sounded from the 
crowd of blacks. 

And presently Macray emptied his can of utshwala, remark¬ 
ing: “Here’s to sleep for little Douglas of that ilk—dog- 
tired,” and picked himself up. 

“How’s the mouth?” asked Cobby. 


A QUESTION OF TEETH 49 

“Bad tonight. Good-night, inkoos.” He passed away be¬ 
yond the dying fire-light into the dark. 

The others sat still, relishing their sense of full stomachs, 
and the comfort of smoking. 

And presently Rolls: “Those two blacks mean to fight it 
out.” 

“Try and stop ’em,” Cobby muttered. 

And presently again Rolls: “Not bad, today’s trek, con¬ 
sidering the timber and the axes going.” 

“Fine,” Cobby muttered. 

And presently again Rolls: “We have sneezing-gas, tear- 
gas, chloroform, to deal with the sentries.” 

But Cobby did not answer, the pipe had dropped out of his 
mouth, his forehead nodded; and now Rolls raised him, say¬ 
ing, “Come on, we’re done up,” and led him away—they two, 
by a rule of Rolls, sleeping always together in a spot selected 
by Rolls, never in the waggon-cartels, now occupied by some 
wounded blacks, the two this evening sleeping between a rock 
and a screen of creepers that dropped like a drapery from the 
rock’s top. On the opposite side of the bivouac-glade Macray 
lay. 

But Rolls, who slept like a bush-cat, with one ear awake, 
was soon sitting up, listening to footsteps that stole near; and 
he was quickly away, tracking the two duellers, who, carrying 
their kerries, went prying for some starlit spot to fight out 
their quarrel. 

Rolls, intending to catch them red-handed, and impress them 
with his omnipresence, shadowed them some hundred yards, 
then, becoming sick of it, was now about to call and order 
them back, when his prowling foot encountered some soft ob¬ 
stacle, upon which he switched on the torch-light, to see it. 

It was Macray there—asleep. 

Till now Rolls had never seen him asleep; and now saw a 
difference of expression in the face, sufficient to arrest him— 
the same difference which Cobby, too, had noticed between the 
Macray of the dockside, and the Macray seen on the steamer. 


50 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

And though Cobby had not fixed in what the difference lay, 
Rolls at once did, on catching sight of a plate of top-teeth, 
lying near the sleeper—though the light-beam had not been on 
Macray one second, when up he started, his palm for a mo¬ 
ment covering his mouth in an instinctive impulse; and now 
his eyes and Rolls’ met and lingered together a little—both 
faces pale. Then Macray chuckled; and Rolls said care¬ 
lessly: “Those two silly niggers—sorry to disturb you,” 

and halloed after the two. 

Within ten minutes Rolls was back in his sleeping bag: 
but in that interval he had seen much. 

He did not lie down: sat thinking and thinking. “That’s 
where the sore mouth comes from,” he muttered: “some mouths 
can’t stand plates of teeth; this plate may be ill-fitting—per¬ 
haps hurriedly made in London for the occasion. Never has 
had the time to get a new set, nor never has given the mouth 
time to get used to this set—takes ’em out every minute he’s 
alone, I reckon, they worry so; claps ’em in when needful: 
never seen without ’em. I see. Always shaved like a dandy 
in the primeval forest. I see. ‘Douglas Macray’—he gave 
that name: devil’s cheek—and cunning. I knew that I’d seen 
that face somewhere; couldn’t drop to where—photo—witless. 
Otherwise, thank God, I’ve had all my wits in camp, or there’d 
he no Cobby now, and no R. K. Rolls now. . . . Well, the 
fittest will survive.” 

Tired as he was, Rolls hardly slept that night, there in the 
reign of rayless darkness between the creepers and the hollow 
of the rock, noting when the man-eater roared afar, when the 
mouth of the ounce yowled to the universe for food, when 
sentries went out, came in. . . . 

The question was—to tell Cobby, or not to tell? and to¬ 
ward morning Rolls answered, “No—not now; after the hap¬ 
pening of what has to happen.” Cobby would command: 
“No killing!” and Rolls would obey, but Macray, who was 
out for killing, would not obey. Rolls, too, now, was all for 


A QUESTION OF TEETH 51 

killing. There are venoms, there are wrongs, which only 
blood can wash out, which only death can solve. 

“One attempt on my life in that Exchange Bar at Johannes¬ 
burg . . . two in London . . . one on the steamer. Low- 
down thug-work. If I forget, may God forget me.” 

At dawn he shook Cobby with a rollic, “Out of it, lazy 
bones”—-rollic and tender, for where he loved he loved, and 
hated where he hated. 

And at breakfast all was as usual, save that both Rolls and 
Macray tended to more than usual merriment, which, in the 
case of Macray, may have been due to the absence, for 
the first time, of the plate in his mouth; a propos of which 
Cobby asked: “What is different about you, Macray? You 
are like a man who has shaved off a moustache.” 

Macray answered with a chuckle. “Top teeth gone—gorilla 
knocked ’em out with a club in the night.” 

This was a jest—like Macray’s jests in general: cheery, 
merrily meant: but pointless, clownish. 

“Is it a question of teeth?” Cobby said: “yes, that is it. So 
what has really happened?” 

“Only this—for seven years, off and on, I’ve been trying to 
wear false teeth, and last night I chucked them for ever off 
me into the bush. Bravo! the eaters will be eaten by an 
ostrich. Now I can dine with my gums and defy the world. 
That was what made my mouth sore, baas.” 

“I see. Why didn’t you ever mention it?” 

“Oh, he was shy before the ladies,” Rolls flung off from over 
a bowl of meal and “amasi” -curds, which he was earnestly 
eating. 

“Still, the teeth did rather heighten your beauty,” Cobby re¬ 
marked to Macray: “and as you look now I seem to remem¬ 
ber seeing you in some dream—somewhere—where was it?” 

Macray chuckled. “You remember, inkoos, the night you 
caught your sister under the oak with a man? I was that 
man.” 


52 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

At which Cobby lowered his lids, silent, many of Macray’s 
jests not being quite to the scientist’s liking. 

And now the forenoon trek, to the singing of the blacks; and 
the noontide rest; and the sun’s altitude taken; and now the 
afternoon trek, which revealed that the forest was not really 
infinite, but had a limit where open country basked in the sun, 
and a river rolled between rows of crocodile-snouts, where 
flamingos in their crimson uniforms stood like sentinels who 
all have lost a leg in the wars; up which river the trek went 
three miles to find a drift, christened “Crocodile Drift” by 
Rolls over two years gone; and, crossing the river, they came 
upon the ashes and charred remains of a cannibal kraal, 
which, Rolls said, was but one of many of which the Wa- 
Ngwanya had cleared that region; and now the field-glass, 
scanning northward, could see a mirage of the mountain- 
range which bounds Wo-Ngwanya on the south. 

And that evening the three men held their indaba on the 
plan of action, seated on a hillock in the shade of a yellow- 
wood tree, whence they could see eastward the reeds of a 
lagoon on a plain peopled with game, deer in thousands, gi¬ 
raffe and buffalo, crane and egret, the three smoking together 
like friends, with a jest anon; and no one could have guessed 
the suspense and tension that was between two of them. 

Rolls said: “Understand that failure spells final failure 
for the failer. I know the girl: if you attack her, she fights; 
and if, as usual, she wins, she gives you time to sigh one last 
prayer: it’s woe to the conquered there, look. What follows? 
That we shouldn’t stake all upon one throw. And we 
shouldn’t try it on without experiment first. Let’s rehearse 
the whole fakement.” 

“And if the rehearsal fails,” Cobby said, “the play never 
comes off.” 

“Yes,” answered Rolls, “if we are not all in the rehearsal. 
So let Macray and me go forward alone, get into the sigodhlo, 
ascertain what’s what, and come back to you before we all 


A QUESTION OF TEETH 53 

pitch into it together. If we two come to grief, there’ll be 
still you left.” 

Rolls’ and Macray’s glances lingered together, while Cobby 
flushed a little, saying: “But why am I being put up in cotton 
wool?” 

“Because yours is the most valuable life,” Rolls quietly an¬ 
swered. 

“Yes”—from Cobby—“but I am deliberately on an adven¬ 
ture, risking that life: I cannot permit you and Macray to incur 
greater-” 

“It must be so, isinduna,” Macray said, weighing his Colt 
meditatively on his palm. “Rolls knows the road: he must 
go; you or I must go with him; and he and I both vote you 
out.” 

“You’re outvoted, Cobby,” Rolls remarked. 

On which Cobby: “Oh, very well, since you see fit. If 
you two fail to come back, I shall go after you at all costs.” 

And Rolls, stretched on the grass, gazing up into the yellow- 
wood : “Oh, one of us is sure to scrape through.” 

“Sure,” echoed Macray, throwing up and catching his auto¬ 
matic, these both knowing that, if either came back, he would 
come alone, each knowing that the other knew. 


VII 


DUELLO 

L ATER in the night when the outspan lay asleep, Rolls, 
lying near Cobby, scribbled on a pocketbook leaf, 
under the beam of an electric torch: “Cobby, I 
reckon to come back, but no knowing. If not, know that 
this Macray is the enemy . Without me, and with him, I 
figure it up that your best course would be to throw over the 
whole fakement, and get back home. Good luck to you and 
me, Cobby.—R. K. R.” 

This he put into Cobby’s tobacco-pouch, knowing that 
Cobby, who smoked only in the evening, would not see it till 
the next evening, when Rolls and Macray would be well away. 

Macray, on his side, knew that Rolls would warn Cobby; 
but when at breakfast Cobby’s manner toward him was as 
usual, he concluded that Rolls would only let Cobby know 
after the departure from camp, and he saw why. Rolls, then, 
would write it, and place the writing where Cobby would be 
sure to find it: and Macray spent an hour after breakfast in 
thinking where that would be; till, in opening his own pouch, 
he thought of Cobby’s, of Cobby’s smoking only in the eve¬ 
ning. . . . 

He then watched till he saw Rolls away at the waggons, 
and, going promptly to Cobby, said: “Give me a pipeful of 
that Boer ’baccie.” 

In a minute he had Rolls’ note out of Cobby’s pouch, and 
presently was reading and destroying it. 

Before noon, with elaborate secrecies, he had buried a 
packet—a cardboard-box in oilskin, of which he had a jealous 

54 


DUELLO 55 

care—at the roots of a particular tree; and soon afterwards 
he and Rolls started out together. 

And that night they two were plodding northward afoot 
forty miles from the camp, two lorn forms lost in a vastness 
of broken and rolling country, pathless, manless, plodding 
in the misty twilight of the sickle of a moon quite new, now 
sinking, and about four miles before them the mighty fact of 
mountains towering, brooding in their citadel of obscurity, 
mystery and muteness. 

The two horses had lately been left knee-haltered; and Rolls 
remarked: “We might safely have ridden on: not much light 
from that moon; and those outlook posts of savages are only 
efficient spotting troops, not small bodies.” 

“Aha,” Macray went. 

Few had been their words, and no word so far of enmity, 
of quarrel. Two strangers travelling together by chance in 
a desert would speak as these spoke; but ever these moved 
shoulder to shoulder, one never an inch behind the other, as 
their horses had moved shoulder to shoulder—a long strain 
on the alertness of nerve and brain and eye and hand. Both 
wished to God that it was over. 

As over open sward they walked, through belt of timber, 
toiling up hillside, moving by the lonesome pool and the bitter 
bittern brooding, sending atrot the troop of little duiker-bok, 
hearing the wild cat whine, there were long silences between 
them. Their throats dry at that tension, each hoped for, yet 
dreaded, the setting of the moon, with whose setting his life 
might set. 

“Cobby’s not a bad old sort,” Macray suddenly remarked: 
“nobody would hurt Cobby, except in defence of Number 
One. What made him take on this job? Just the money in 
it?” 

“Not much”—from Rolls: “that’s what made me. Cobby’s 
after seeing justice done.” 

“Aha.” 

Then again that silent plod of hide-shoes over grass and 


56 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

dust and rock; and presently Rolls: “We’re climbing all 
along, even when it looks as if we weren’t.” 

“Oh, ay”—from Macray. 

“I know where we are now. One of their outpost vedettes 
will not be two miles from here.” 

“Aha.” 

Five minutes more, and they stood confronted with cliff- 
wall some thirty feet high, which seemed to stretch intermi¬ 
nably to east and west, dropping here or there a waterfall; as 
to which Rolls remarked: “Yes, I remember this bit now; 
there are some passes going up—we’ll try this way”—turning 
westward to the left; and over sickly sward they walked close 
before the cliff, until they came to an opening in its face. 

The natural rock-path that ran up here being steep, strewn 
with stones, narrow as a man, here one of the two had to have 
his back to the other, and in a flash both understood that the 
moment of action had come: and the quicker lived. 

“Hands up!” cried Rolls like thunderclap, in the same sec¬ 
ond that Macray, without a word, fired at him. 

But Rolls had been by the hundredth of a second the more 
thunder-prompt, and Macray, when he fired, was two Macrays, 
one firing, the other throwing his hands up, conscious of a 
muzzle already at his breast, so that his bullet shot up¬ 
ward. . . . 

“Drop your revolver,” ordered Rolls. 

The revolver dropped: and Rolls, keeping eye and muzzle 
on the foe, stooped to pick it up; but his hand not chancing 
to encounter the gun, he glanced down to see it; and in the 
wink of that instant Macray was upon him, grabbing Rolls’ re¬ 
volver-wrist, tumbling Rolls over to the ground, dropping 
upon Rolls. 

There they struggled together—a struggle that could not 
long continue for lack of wind, it was so cat-o’-mountain in 
the franticness of its activity, life the victor’s prize. Twice 
while it lasted those solitudes heard reports of gun-fire— 
Rolls firing; but without hurt to the other, who had the advan- 


DUELLO 57 

tage of being much the younger, of being considerably the 
bigger, of being uppermost to begin with: advantages over 
which that inveterate toughness of Rolls might not have pre¬ 
vailed, if Macray had not let go Rolls’ left hand to snatch 
his sheath-knife, and finish it. In that same second Rolls 
had him overthrown, undone, and under. . . . 

His knee on Macray’s arm, his grip at Macray’s throat, 
Rolls glared close into his foe’s face, grinning at him, his 
throat rasping as hoarse as Macray’s rasped. 

Then he sprang up, picked up the two revolvers, dropped 
his own into its holster, dropped Macray’s and Macray’s 
knife into his knapsack, took from the knapsack a skein of 
window-cord, cut off a bit, and said: “Get up.” 

Then, Macray up, he said: “Hands behind your back.” 

On which Macray, as he obeyed, chuckled, or attempted to 
chuckle, uttering: “Anything to oblige!” 

Rolls then went to bind Macray, saying: “One movement, 
and you’re a dead man.” 

“Wonder I’m not that already”—from Macray. 

“Well, and whom do you owe your life to—for the time 
being?” 

“To the best of all possible R. K. Rollses apparently,” 
said the unconquerable Macray. 

Rolls laughed. “Not much! Not likely! Bad shot! You 
would be in hell now all right, if it had been only me. But 
Cobby don’t cotton to ‘assassinations’: and I want to go back 
able to shake his hand and make him a truthful report of what 
took place.” 

“Here’s to old Cobby, then, and to whatever gods may be. 
Life’s damned sweet; and I’d sooner be a crossing-sweeper at 
Charing Cross than a Lord Mayor in the realms below.” 

“Prize tonight, then, since you like life”—Rolls tied the 
last knot on the wrists—“as I do. Tomorrow night that moon 
will be a bit fatter and higher at this hour, but one of us two 
won’t be knowing about it. We’ll fight it out in the morning 
light, look. Come on.” 


58 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

He moved now up the rock-path, and Macray followed, re¬ 
lieved and frivolous in a reaction from the long strain, anon 
making a remark meant to be jocular and mocking, though he 
did not fail, as bidden, to look at the moon with a new interest 
and wistfulness; and on they plodded over country that still in¬ 
creased in steepness, until the moon was down, soon after 
which another moon—at its full, this one—came into their 
view, this being the light of a fire shining in the circular door¬ 
way of a hut perched some seventy feet up in cliffside bush— 
one of the outlook posts of Wo-Ngwanya. 

This point being only eight or nine miles from the capital 
kraal beyond the mountains, Rolls meant, if again victorious 
the next day, to visit the kraal alone the next midnight, and 
investigate the possibilities, in order to report to Cobby, he 
having with him cord-ladder, air-gun, and every essential for 
“the rehearsal”; nor did the first step to this end—the slipping- 
in past the vedettes—present any difficulty: in such a night, in 
the absence of searchlights, a company of soldiers could have 
prowled into the pass unnoticed. 

Here Macray crept foremost, with Rolls’ muzzle at his back, 
lest he should deliberately rouse the outlook by any sound; 
and now the way was up and up the endless stair of that tower 
of mountain-rock, that looked a suitable boundary for a land, 
not of Wo-Ngwanya, but of titans and archangels, and now 
they were crawling northwest through some gross grove of 
wood, the dwelling-place of gloom, and now were moving 
northeast along dizzy cliff-brinks within theatres of crags, 
trackless grandeurs, with organ-voices of waters raving every¬ 
where, and always a noisy north-wind thwarting them, so that 
toward midnight they halted exhausted on a ledge where the 
rock above rather overhung them, and had a bluff which a 
little protected them from the wind; and here Rolls, having 
produced from his knapsack biltong, biscuits, Johnny Walker, 
tied up Macray’s legs, untied his hands behind, tied them be¬ 
fore; and there, seated, they ate and drank together. 

“Here we sleep,” Rolls remarked between bottle and lip. 


59 


DUELLO 

“Or pretend to,” said Macray, feeding his mouth two-handed. 

“/’ll be sleeping all right,” Rolls muttered. 

“Maybe I can roll you down the precipice during the night 
—good idea: the rolling of Rolls. Or knock out your brains 
with one of those stones.” 

“No, you won’t be doing much stirring,” Rolls answered. 
“I respect you some, Macray: an unscrupulous brute, born 
without a God or a conscience; but you have brains.” 

Macray reflected on this, and then, deciding, said: “Yes, 
all that’s true. You’re a man who can see, Rolls.” 

Rolls was now trying to light a cigar within his hat, but, 
after several failures, muttered: “Oh, well, here’s to bed,” 
and lay close under the crag. 

Macray, too, lay, and both looked up with that pang of a 
look that may be the last at clouds that scudded southward over 
the vault, and, sailing northward, all the swarm of the con¬ 
stellations, steadily sailing together, like a navy that steadily 
sails and sails. 

But, though the winds were touched with chill up there, 
within some minutes Rolls was asleep but for an ear: only 
Macray lay wakeful. And see him at one time, tied as he was, 
drawing himself softly a little to peer over the edge of the 
ledge, and ponder upon what he saw. . . . Then he lay anew 
under the rock-shadow, wooing sleep; but had just succeeded 
in drowsing, when he was roused by a shout ... a shout of 
horror. 

He started up, staring at Rolls, whom he saw staring also. 

“Bad dreams?” Macray asked suddenly. 

Rolls did not answer. 

Macray chuckled: “Conscience, Rolls. . . .” 

Rolls dropped again upon the rock, terribly trembling. He 
had dreamed that he was careering headlong down the ravine 
—a dream so real , and so dismal in mood, that it was hours 
before he could sleep anew—in fits and starts. 

Hence the dawn of morning came upon him rather shaken, 
rather out of sorts. But showing no sign of it, save a slight 


60 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

pallor, he sprang up—summoned Macray—muttering: “Come, 
let’s have it over”—set free Macray’s legs. 

“Well, what’s the rules of the game?” Macray asked, smil¬ 
ing—pale now, his eyelids twitching—but steadily smiling. 

Rolls looked along the ledge—some sixty feet long, some 
four broad, rather concave in form, bluffing out at the north 
and south ends; and glancing over the edge in that grey of 
dawn, one saw only jags and crags and small trees, and no 
bottom but mists steaming; and on the opposite side of the 
ravine, fifteen feet to the east, a like scene of rock and tree. 

“You will stand at that north end,” Rolls said. “I at that 
south. You will hold one end of this cord low, and I’ll slide 
your revolver down it to you. When I see it reach your hand, 
I fire.” 

“Bah!” broke bitterly from the other’s lips: “and you talk of 
wanting fair-play to please Master Cobby! What’s this but 
assassination? While I’m getting my revolver from the cord 
I drop dead—of course.” 

Rolls saw this—moved some steps away, reflecting, and came 
hack saying: “Well, I’m game to meet you, if you have any 
better plan.” 

Macray had a twitching of the eyelids, as in all his instants 
of high-pitched egoism. He said: “You want fair-play. 
Well, you bind my revolver to my right wrist, muzzle-back¬ 
ward; and I| bind yours to yours with the same knots and 
length of cord. Then you tie a long cord to the two bind¬ 
ings, and retire till the cord is taut, which will be the signal to 
start unbinding with tooth and nail, and the quickest wins. 
Not quite fair to me, since I have more gum than tooth: but 
I’m game . . . you want fair-play. . . .” His eyelids twitched. 

“What’s that—Mexican?” 

“Yes; Mexican.” 

Rolls anew moved some paces away, weighing it with a wary 
eye, and came back, saying: “Well, maybe we’ll make it that 
road: I’ll figure it up; we’ll have some breakfast.” 

“God, man, get it over!” cried out Macray, staring at him. 


61 


DUELLO 

On which Rolls, suddenly pallid with passion flashing fire 
from his eyes, said sharply: “Damn it, yes, get it over it is. 
No doubt I’m as smart a man as you at any game. Sit down.” 

And, as Macray sat with that pallid smile of his, Rolls in a 
flurry of action again tied his legs together, then searched 
him from hat to shoes, found a penknife and a flintstone, tossed 
them away. He then drew out the magazines from both the 
Colt’s and proceeded to free Macray’s wrists; then cut two 
equal lengths of cord, with one of which he bound one of the 
Colt’s to Macray’s right wrist, muzzle backward, tieing up the 
trigger, making the knots with all his strength; and now, pre¬ 
senting the other Colt’s to Macray, permitted it to be similarly 
bound to his own wrist. Which done, he tied the ends of a 
cord nearly equal in length to the ledge’s length to the two 
bindings. 

“That fair now, Douglas Macray?” says he. 

“All serene, Rolls,” says Macray. 

With a slash of his knife Rolls now freed the other’s feet. 

“/ will go south, if you like,” said Macray, rising upright. 

“What’s that for?” asked Rolls. 

“It is lower, and I| am the taller—not that it matters.” His 
eyelids twitched. 

“Makes no matter to me either road,” said Rolls. 

On which Macray stepped backward southward, as Rolls 
replaced one of the magazines in his own Colt’s, and, stepping 
backward northward, tossed the other to Macray. 

With their eyes fixed on each other, they increased the dis¬ 
tance between them, until the cord was taut: then instantly bent 
to the untying. 

Macray, however, made no actual attempt to untie, but, while 
pretending to untie, stepped two paces forward, and, bending 
sideways, picked up with his left hand a flint-stone, of which 
there were many scattered about the ledge. 

Of this act of treachery Rolls, with one watchful eye aside, 
was conscious; but though flints can be rather sharp, he felt 
no keen fear that the edge of a flint, picked up haphazard, 


62 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

would chance to get through the several thicknesses of cord 
that entangled the triggers, before he could rend away and loose 
his own entanglements with tooth and nail—a task well in 
progress already. 

But Macray had no intention of cutting his entanglements. 
. . . The instant the flint was in his fingers, a shout hopped out 
of his mouth, as he leapt from off the ledge, and a shout 
hopped out of Rolls’ mouth, as he found himself tugged for¬ 
ward askew, and falling down the gulf. 

Macray alighted upon another ledge which he had observed 
quite thirty feet below, a ledge twenty feet long and half as 
broad, where a dwarf mohnono-tree, with leaves of silver, 
sprang out of the cliff-side: to which tree he clung with an 
arm wrenched to dislocation by the arrest of Rolls’ descent, 
clung during several seconds of frenzy, while with the flint in 
his left fingers he sawed to sever the cord that connected him 
with the dead; and still when the cord was cut he clung on 
dizzied, drunk, distraught, watching the history and incidents 
of the body’s voyage during ten seconds which seemed as many 
minutes, saw it wheel and vault from point to point of rock, 
saw it hurled by the earth’s reeling upon the opposite wall of 
the ravine, and disappear into the sea of mists. 

Macray fell upon his face, and lay there trembling. “My 
God!" he said. 

But within fifteen minutes he chuckled in his gullet: it lived, 
that dear ego of his, that Number One that he had a fancy for; 
and “damn you deep!” he muttered to the dead. 

However, he was a prisoner there on the ledge, he and a 
chough’s chicks; and it was only after hours of efforts and 
very perilous failures that, by ramming fragments of his 
tree into crannies of the crag, he managed to regain the ledge 
from which he had leapt. 

There he ate and rested; then, taking Rolls’ knapsack, 
plodded on northward for the capital of Wo-Ngwanya, to tell 
a tale there. 


VIII 


THE SIGODHLO 

T WO mornings afterwards Cobby wrote in his journal: 
“My sentiment toward Rolls would better be named 
affection than liking: an affection based on respect. I 
have known no intelligence whose judgments in general were 
more trustworthy; and though his moral sense was not dainty, 
being as rough-and-ready as the whole Rolls, his substance 
was sound as a nut. Innate, moreover, in the man, strange 
to say, was a soul of poetry, a relation with the soul of Nature 
—a thing without song, or voice, or, I think, much emotion— 
hidden behind hides of commonness, but really there, and rare. 
My friend; my dear friend. Never shall I forget the sense of 
loss, of solitude, the pang of heart, when, near seven last night, 
I saw Macray riding in alone over the plain in the moon’s 
light, leading Rolls’ mare by the rein, and I knew that the 
moving Finger had written and moved on, as when the funeral 
is over now and done, and man has gone to his long home, 
and the mourners go about the streets. 

“And so perplexing the way of it! It appears that the two 
abandoned their horses too soon, walked a long way toward 
the mountains, and stopped to rest in a forest, where Rolls de¬ 
sired to sleep, but was disturbed by a roaring, which Macray 
said was a lion’s, but Rolls maintained that it was an ostrich’s; 
and at last, exclaiming ‘Oh, stash it!’ Rolls dashed away to 
shoot the (supposed) ostrich. Macray heard Rolls’ revolver 
pop, then an outcry, and ran to Rolls’ assistance, to find him 
dead under a lion and lioness, which Macray contrived to kill, 
after dislocating his arm in climbing a tree. 

“Such is Macray’s account of things. But who could ever 
63 


64 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

have predicted that Ulysses would die in that silly way—by a 
lion. He himself would have derided the prediction, I think; 
and there is something in it which the brain will not realize. 
Moreover, I remember hearing my friend say that he at least 
could always distinguish between the roarings of lion and 
ostrich; nor do ostriches usually roar at so late an hour. Very 
strange: I do not understand; must only accept. 

“Well, farewell, you brave R. K. R.: gone; but not to be 
forgotten. 

“Then, alone, Macray walked on northward, following direc¬ 
tions that had dropped from Rolls; passed over the mountains; 
and at two in the morning actually effected an entry into the 
town, into the royal enclosure, and on to the grounds of the 
royal hut. So he reports. And his report is anything but 
heartening. ‘We will never make her, baas,’ is his comment, 
this her not referring to a lady, but to an enterprise. Three 
sentries, it appears, at the royal gates, each a giant. So—‘take 
my advice’—I am now to throw away so many months of 
effort, to turn tail at the very gates of the enterprise, and to ‘be 
quick about it,’ ere the Wa-Ngwanya get wind of our presence 
here, for then ‘all will be up with all of us.’ 

“This irritated me, and I said to Macray: ‘By no means 
up with us. Understand, Macray, that one white man armed 
with the science of Europe is mightier than all the Wa- 
Ngwanya, backed by all the blacks of Africa—given the oppor¬ 
tunity to use the tools of his science. Am I to take it, then, 
that you are losing nerve?’ 

“‘Not a bit, inkoos,’ was his nonchalant answer: ‘if you are 
for seeing it through without Rolls, here am I. But I’ll cry 
to see a head like yours chopped off. You should be killed 
by electricity—something scientific—not by a nigger’s bill. 
Turn back, isinduna—take my tip.’ 

“ ‘On the contrary,’ I answered, ‘I will go on.’ 

“ ‘Good egg,’ he said: ‘I admire your spirit, if not your 
cunning.’ 

“I wonder why he chose this word ‘cunning’—a quality 


THE SIGODHLO 


65 


which he himself may not lack, perhaps. Certainly, I have a 
sense of some unknown quantity in Macray, an x, a mask—my 
fancy perhaps. Throughout the trek he has shown himself 
ever jovial, cheerily enduring, cool in danger, quick to learn, 
versatile, serviceable, exhibiting no little initiative and effi¬ 
ciency as hunter, soldier, and traveller, so that I have con¬ 
gratulated myself on the bargain I made with him at Johannes¬ 
burg. But there has never been any love lost between him 
and Rolls, I could see; and, as for me, something in him un¬ 
doubtedly repels something in me. However, we are now 
bound together for good or evil. A week hence will test his 
mettle. . . . Meantime, hunting, improving the food-stock, 
and maturing a scheme for making the attempt when the 
moonlight is over, I cautiously excogitating each detail. I 
have determined to move the expedition no further north 
ward, since it appears that many of the blacks feel nervous 
of advancing nearer the Wa-Ngwanya, whose reputation has 
bred terror in their breasts. And now, thou Pallas of Good 
Counsel, be my goddess. . . .” 

But on the seventh day thence, when the venture was to have 
been made, Macray stated that he was “seedy” from his sick 
arm, so it was not till the ninth night that, all being at last 
ready, the attempt was made, Cobby taking with him Macray, 
two Zulus, and a mule, which, like the men, was shod with 
rubber. Overcast and dark as the night was, they contrived, 
soon after abandoning their animals, to find that same pass up 
which Rolls and Macray had travelled, and, not without the 
aid of electric torches, crossed the maze of mountain shortly 
after one in the morning. 

Macray acting as guide, they found out a town that lay 
drowned in darkness, and by an hour’s prowl round its outer 
stockade, came to its back part, Cobby estimating that the 
place, though more compact and peopled, was hardly bigger 
than Midhurst or Petersfield; and Macray whispered that 
from that back part to the sigodhlo, or royal kraal, was hardly 
a quarter-hour’s walk. 


66 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

When, from the mule’s back, Macray had cast a rope-ladder, 
its grapples wrapped in rubber, the four were speedily in the 
outermost round of street, and thence prowled down a street 
that led pretty steeply centreward. No sentinel in all this part 
—a fact which astonished both Cobby and his blacks; and not 
a sound in all that gloom, only remotely somewhere the dumb 
boom of a drum going, and far off a baby clamouring, and 
presently far off the exclamations of a dog barking at the 
arising of some event in the reign of nothingness, and presently 
the shine of a fire in the round doorway of a round hut, and in 
there, suckling a child, a woman seated, quite close to whom 
they moved unseen. 

Then an enclosure, woven of fine tambuti grass, over which 
they climbed, without needing to fall upon, chloroform, bind, 
gag or gas any guardsman, for none appeared. Inside—a 
village within a city—stood residences of royal son or cousin, 
of the late King’s ladies, of Court-officials, roomy intervals 
separating the residences, every residence being a group of 
huts slumbering within its own enclosure, grossly embowered 
within its own grove of equatorial foliage and flower, which 
breathed out a sigh to the night-breeze, so that here the dark¬ 
ness was even deeper, because of all these arbours of large- 
leaved boscage, palm and sarsaparilla, banana, tree-fern; and 
it was beneath a big fig-tree near the middle of the ring that 
the marauders paused to take their bearings. 

Here Cobby whispered at Macray’s ear: “No sentries?”— 
for at this oddity, although it had an aspect of luck, he felt 
nevertheless a vague apprehension. 

“Funny thing,” Macray whispered him; and one of the Zulus 
whispered: “Something wrong! Take care!” 

At the same time Macray was whispering: “See that junk 
of bush straight ahead? In there she should be.” 

“Come," Cobby now whispered, and went headlong, bent, 
prowling keen and quick. 


IX 


THE ROYAL HUT 

P ROWLING close outside the enclosure of the sovereign’s 
domicile under gross shadow of foliage which overgrew, 
the four slowly approached the south portion of the 
enclosure. Now, however, there was alarm—a dog starting 
to bark. 

On finding out the dog, a small thing tied near the stockade 
—why tied there was not clear—one of the two Zulus tossed 
it biltong, and Cobby then, in his zest for chloroform that 
morning, pressed a cloth over its nose, and shut it up. 

In two minutes more they came to the gate of the stock¬ 
ade. . . . 

Here three at least of the four were quite certain of finding 
sentries, but there was none. 

“What does it mean?” Cobby whispered to Macray. 

“Very rum!” Macray whispered back. “Shall we turn 
tail?” 

Both the Zulus already had revolvers in hand, expecting now 
an ambush. 

Now Cobby, raising himself on the stockade, peered over, 
to see before him, a long way off at the bottom of an avenue, 
the round doorway of a hut, filled with fire-light, like a dim 
full-moon. 

And with a heart now fast beating he dropped back to his 
feet, whispering keenly, “Come, try the gate . . . this may 
be luck. . . .” 

His torch-ray, switched upon the gate’s edge, showed two 
thongs for raising two latches of wood within: this was all the 

67 


68 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


fastening; the gate opened easily outward; and they passed up 
a little ascent that had rows of stones imbedded in the earth 
to serve as steps, then on along an avenue all ambushed in 
blackness of darkness, having among the bush, on each side, 
five idols, mighty forms, of which the marauders were just 
conscious in moving close under them, these being the only 
sentinels visible; and in the distance ahead the steady disc of 
light, a dim eye, soundless, mysterious, that seemed to drowse 
and dream. 

Cobby and Macray crawled foremost, and near behind them 
the two furtive Zulus, all eye and ear, all nerves and alert¬ 
ness. 

Then, to the scandalizing of every one, Macray dropped his 
revolver . . . and loud it sounded, an outrage on that hush. 
. . . Some moments more, and it was as if some one muttered 
somewhere in the night. . . . The men stood arrested by it: 
but it was so low, and so momentary, a rumour from nowhere, 
that none was certain that it was not some birth from the 
night’s disquiet, from the stirring of wind and tree. Cobby 
moved on, and soon, lying on his face, was spying into the 
lighted opening. . . . 

He saw a round room, big as his own drawing-room at home, 
with a vaulted roof supported toward its centre by two roof- 
trees of red-wood (mopane), ten feet apart, quite nicely fash¬ 
ioned and polished, between them in the roof being a smoke- 
hole, and under this a dying fire of logs; hanging from the 
roof a few charms—snake-skins, ivory elephants; over the floor 
a profusion of rugs, with some gourds and stools well pol¬ 
ished; and round the walls swaths of tapestry of fawn-skin 
soft-tanned, all embroidered with elephants in beads of “gold- 
stone,” hanging from the ends of pegs; and between them on 
the wall shields, and sheaves of spears. But not all this did 
Cobby see, his gaze being riveted on two girls who lay on beds 
of rugs at the foot of the roof-trees, one on each side of the 
fire, their feet toward him, their faces as yet very vague to him, 
though it was evident that the one to his right with the ivory 


THE ROYAL HUT 69 

anklet was white, that the one to his left with the brass bangles 
was black: and motionless they lay. 

Here, then, was the instant, and here a case for the judicious 
application of chloroform: so Cobby whispered “the black” 
into the tympanum of Macray, handing bottle and cloth, he 
having carefully trained Macray to apply anaesthetics, while he 
himself held bottle and cloth for the white. 

And now he was impetuously in. 

As little light came from the fire, he, on finding himself over 
the white, switched on the little ray of his torch, and saw her 
well, lying half on her side, with one arm cast naked above 
her head as in careless slumber, the rest of her wrapped in a 
kaross of yellow cloth embroidered everywhere with black 
elephants; and there, just as Rolls had once described her, was 
the lane running up the side of her high brow betwixt the wings 
of her hair. 

Cobby, breathing “By heaven!” started, as a dart of admira¬ 
tion pierced his nature. 

In that same moment there arose a sound—behind him— 
something like a snigger, like half a snigger smothered, which, 
as it slipped out, was finished. Cobby glanced alertly round 
at the negro girl, who, however, seemed asleep, then again at 
the white, whose lips, as if in sympathy with that snigger, had 
now moved into a smile, the vaguest ghost of a smile—but still 
visible. 

The truth now pierced Cobby’s consciousness that these peo¬ 
ple were not really asleep—a fact chilling enough to the heart. 
There he stood pallor-struck—saw all lost, his party trapped; 
but, as he was not sure, and as retreat was hardly his way, he 
was still about to venture upon doing what he was there to do, 
when, as he stooped to her, the Queen’s lips opened a little to 
say “now.” 

“Hands up!” shouted Cobby in Zulu, spinning to the four 
winds with his revolver pointed at a circle of nine giants who 
spurted out upon him from behind all the swaths of wall- 
curtain; but no hand was put “up,” and he did not shoot, 


70 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


understanding in a flash that that would be useless bloodshed, 
since, whichever way he span, some were at his back, while 
Macray seemed seized with paralysis. 

One shot, however, was fired—outside the hut—by one of 
the two Zulus, who were pounced upon by an ambuscade out¬ 
side; and this man, after shooting another in the abdomen, 
made his escape through the bush of the close. But when that 
shot sounded outside, Cobby was already on his back, panting 
under a foot on his breast and another on his neck, his arms 
bound to his sides with many rounds of hide, his poor cloth 
and bottle of science lying scattered from his hand, exhaling a 
smell of carbohydrates; two stood by Macray, holding his 
arms; while the Queen and Sueela, seated on their beds, 
Sueela with big ox-eyes, her head all kid’s-horns of hair stick¬ 
ing out as in curling-pins, inspected the activities of the men, 
three of whom had kindled at the logs torches which illumined 
the room with a smoky glow. 

But now one from outside entered the opening, and, on 
hands and knees, uttered the report: “Bayete! Kindayana 
shot in the belly; the one that shot him gone off; another one 
captured”—and instantly the Queen’s countenance changed. 
Springing to her feet, she went ranging about the chamber, re¬ 
sentment on her brow; but stopped to say over her shoulder to 
the messenger: “Carry Kindayana to Mandaganya” (a doc- 
toress); on which the messenger went running out, bent so 
headlong down, as to suggest one tumbling on his face, or 
seeking in haste a flea on the floor, while Spiciewegiehotiu 
again ranged the room, and Sueela, expecting squalls, followed 
her goings with ogling ox-eyes, with her fingers expanded 
like a goose’s toes, with a pantomime pull of face, as when a 
baby goes “Oh! bogies!” 

When the Queen next stopped, it was to point a baton of 
ivory at one of the nine giants, and say: “You run and tell 
his highness the Commander to send a mounted messenger to 
the captain who has gone to destroy their camp: if they point 
out the one who shot Kindayana, the captain let ten of them 


THE ROYAL HUT 71 

live; if not, he kill them all”—and, bent headlong, seeking a 
flea, this messenger went running, while Spiciewegiehotiu stood 
with a shoulder propped upon a roof-tree, her feet crossed, a 
palm on her upper haunch, like a birch formed of long curves 
perfectly outlined by a kaross bound in by a simple string at 
the waist, and falling to the ankles, a flimsy thing, accumula¬ 
tion of raiment not being the mode among the ladies of this 
community; and she pointed her sceptre, saying to another: 
“These two and the one outside to ‘The Elephant’ for now” 
—but at the same time made a silent sign that this was not 
meant as to Macray. 

The feet that had been on Cobby then lifted, stirred him to 
stand up, and he, scrambling upright, faced Spiciewegiehotiu, 
though, as he was in a half-dark, with no torch near him, she 
hardly saw his face. 

“What you want here, you?” she called to him. 

Guessing her meaning, he answered in Zulu with a mon¬ 
arch’s head and offended lids: “I am here, not for my own 
good, but for yours. It appears that I am your cousin, and 
your rightful guide and guardian. You will have to do what 
I tell you—if I live. Soon I| shall learn to gabble your jargon, 
then I will tell you.” 

She, apparently, understood at any rate some of it, for with 
a nose of deadly disdain pulled at him, with her sceptre up¬ 
lifted to hit him, she stepped promptly upon him, crying out 
with the flying tongue of a scold: “You think you have time to 
learn Se-Ngwanya jargon? You think so? Vultures know 
how black man taste; now they want to know how white man 
taste. If the man your man shot die, Ah! you watch vultures 
eat your tongue before they eat your lungs.” 

And down the baton of ivory came, or was coming, for his 
head, when it halted suspended: now she saw his face, that 
rock of his sovereignty, upon which the waves of defeat and 
danger seethed in vain. 

But it was not respect that stayed her blow, but something 
else—Memory. For quite a minute of silence she eyed him; 


72 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

then a left finger summoned one of the torch-bearers, and for 
quite another minute of silence in the light of that torch her 
eyes pondered upon him, while Sueela, leaning forward, stared 
with wonderment at her. 

In those moments it seemed to the Queen that in some dream 
somewhere she had seen that countenance, known its meaning, 
and within what household and home of mood it lived and 
moved—Cobby, in fact, having a very strong resemblance to 
his Aunt; Jane, Spiciewegiehotiu’s mother, a stronger resem¬ 
blance than to his own mother, as Spiciewegiehotiu more re¬ 
sembled his mother than her own. 

Spiciewegiehotiu turned away without a word; stood again 
against the roof-tree, with lowered lids. 

“If you care anything for Reason-” Cobby now began to 

say, when she, with sudden fretfulness, shook her face in¬ 
tolerantly, saying: “Take these men out of my sight!” And 
at once this was done. 


X 


“THE ELEPHANT” 

C OBBY, Macray and their Zulu, after being taken by a 
guard of seven through the gate of the Queen’s park, 
walked southward down a slope, till they came to a 
palisade half a mile long that ran east and west, where a 
wicket was opened to them by a picket posted there. 

Now they were at the top of “the Square,” a place (called 
“awna,” or “kotla”) enclosed with palisades, long as Totten¬ 
ham Court Road, with a river running along its east side, an 
area big enough to contain the live-stock of that district in case 
of invasion, an expanse of emptiness containing scarcely any¬ 
thing save, here or there, some tremendous old tree gone hol¬ 
low, and rags of grass. But after stepping through that wicket, 
the party passed by a platform of earth, hard-trodden, three 
feet high, on which were pillars of wood supporting a roof of 
reeds some fifty feet long, under which canopy were three 
steps of stone, leading up to an armchair of stone, and before 
this throne two semicircles of stools, concentric—this being the 
judgment-seat and council-place of the Queen, as shown in 
the drawing of the town by Cobby. 

Then, south of that platform, they passed by another ob¬ 
ject—a cube of earth three feet big—very red then in the 
torchlight, for, here heads fell. And then another platform 
with pillars and a roof—the market; and thence the tramp was 
past the guards of the great gate, and along country-road to the 
right. 

Without pause the seven giants chuckled and chatted, as they 
73 


74 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

sauntered on, and anon differed in opinion and waxed warm, 
full of other interests than their prisoners; but Cobby walked 
silent, and when Macray said in his light way, “Well, we seem 
to be in a bad old way, baas,” and received no answer, he, 
too, walked silent with his thoughts. 

Cobby was offended that Macray had not joined him in hold¬ 
ing up the nine with his revolver in the royal hut; nor could 
he understand why his and the Zulu’s arms were bound, and 
not Macray’s. 

But what was heavy now upon him was not his own fate, nor 
yet Macray’s, but his camp’s—those forty-seven whom he had 
led to death, for he had gathered in the hut that they were to 
be wiped out. But how possibly could Spiciewegiehotiu know 
where his camp lay in the vast of Africa? How, too, had she 
foreknown—with so much preciseness!—his attempt upon her 
that night? By nature slow to suspicion, he did not conceive 
the idea that Macray, after the death of Rolls, might have 
come to Spiciewegiehotiu, and told her all. 

Down a slope westward the way was, with here or there a 
private kraal or farmstead that the eye could divine in the 
dark, where a cow lowed, a bull highed, or shrilled, and, out¬ 
lined southward on the sky, the mountains, that were no more 
mountains now, but only hills; down, then up, and down, 
till they came to a lake, in which Cobby suddenly found him¬ 
self wading knee-deep, and close before him cliff-wall, sixty 
feet high, passing away into darkness north and south. Imag¬ 
ining that this cliff was washed by the water, he wondered 
whither they were going, until, on coming to the cliff-face, his 
captor pressed down his nape to make him stoop, and, as he 
entered under the cliff, he understood that this must be the 
“Elephant”-rock, supported on “legs,” of which Rolls had told 
him. 

Twice, as he walked, on, wading, he happened to let his 
head lift a little from the awkward stoop, and twice bumped 
it; but after some minutes of it, the roof of rock rose some¬ 
what, and thenceforth became a dead level a foot above his 


“THE ELEPHANT” 


75 

head, though still his jailer moved with a little stoop, just 
shaving the rock with his ostrich plumes. 

On and on the walk was, the water quite warm, as if having 
a volcanic warmth, nowhere rising higher than the thigh, the 
bottom a bottom of rock; and here, where no breath of breeze 
seemed to stray, the torch burned steady, shedding a blood 
of slaughter over the jet-black surface of the water, showing 
anon patches of lotus and anon reaches of lichen—only one 
torch now, for after some time Cobby realized with a start 
that the party of ten had become a party of five, Macray and 
four of the guard being no longer in it; he had been all pre¬ 
occupied with the strangeness of the place in which he now 
found himself straying—could not rid his brain of the impres¬ 
sion that the place lay profoundly buried in subterranean 
depths, the abode of gnomes ruminating in there the opium of 
a reverie that never ended, brooding for ever in the bosom of 
that home of muteness, into whose gloom no glim of the sun 
or of the moon ever entered; and he understood that farther 
than the flight of fancy that roof of rock ran on and on, and 
under it always that night of water, farther than fancy flies: 
so he had had no notion at what moment Macray had ceased to 
be near behind him; it had been silently done . . . ! 

A mile of that drowsy water went coiling away in waves like 
waves of oil round his wading thighs, a thousand times, and 
again a thousand times, in a silence not now broken by the 
blacks, because of the babble of echoes from the rock-roof that 
mocked all attempts at talking; only Cobby, twice turning to 
his Zulu, said: “Courage, Panda!” and was answered with 
the smile of a dauntless man. 

And now the monotony of that wading and wading in a 
drowsy air saturated with water-vapour made Cobby drowsy in 
a reaction after his late agitations; he longed, as if he had 
drunk a drug, to stop and drop, to squat in that gloom of the 
lukewarm lagoon, and nod under the load of the roof of rock 
—did, in fact, begin to nod, when his head again struck the 
roof, which again came down a little for a hundred yards; 


76 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

at the end of which an area of radiance on the water came into 
sight, and then two stone steps rising out of the water at a 
place where the monotony of roof was broken by a vaulted 
room, in this room being a doorway shaped like a bow, and 
at the bow-string the two steps, the radiance on the water being 
shed from two torches at the doorway: and up the two steps, 
green-grown and slimy, the five stepped, stooped into the door¬ 
way, and went stooping up a rock-corridor to a rock-hall, in 
the middle of which, surrounded by nut-torches (oil-nuts stuck 
on skewers) twelve men lolled, smoking, snuff-taking, play¬ 
ing toss-and-pick-up with marbles. 

All about this hall were piles of logs, and there was a fire 
under a pot, the smoke going up a hole tunnelled through the 
rock—chimney and ventilator to the whole. Those outer steps 
also were obviously artificial, “The Elephant” having been 
more or less modified by man into a prison and fortress: 
Cobby called it “The Elephant and Castle.” 

Up leapt the twelve to crowd round the umlungo (white) — 
a colour respected here, because of “the white lamb washed,” 
but she was much less chromatic than Cobby, nor had they 
been at such close quarters before with that colour. One fel¬ 
low just touched Cobby’s chest, then glanced at his finger-tip; 
one said: “Many of them—somewhere”; and another said: 
“Eheh (Yes), there’s all sorts of things somewhere; me hear 
somebody say there’s people with three eyes”; a third, agaze 
with hands on knees, observed: “Na! there is blue in his eyes, 
there is red in his hair, his lip is pink: me wish his nose was 
only green, he’d be pretty like the rainbow”; “Poh! let me 
alone, he is best as he is,” answered another. “He is no um- 
fagosan (base-born),” one said: “see how he look”; and one 
asked: “Where he spring from? What he come for?” but 
the prisoners’ conductors were not careful to explain, one of 
them now ordering: “Untie their arms, and put them in the 
big prison to the right.” 

“May I not have my torch?” Cobby asked of this one, who 
had Cobby’s torch, revolver, knife, bag, hat. 


“THE ELEPHANT” 


77 


The giant shook No from his head. 

“It is not a gun, just a torch,” Cobby said, then with a sud¬ 
den movement switched on the light in the giant’s hand; upon 
which the giant dropped the thing like hot iron, springing back¬ 
ward. 

Cobby then picked it up, and, switching off the light, pre¬ 
sented it to him, saying: “It is harmless.” 

But the man now shrank from it. “Can you make it shine 
again?” he demanded. 

Cobby switched it on. 

“Na!” and “Na!” now sounded, all crowding round to see 
this thing under heaven. 

“Now make it stop!” 

“Now make it shine again!” 

“You make it,” Cobby said, showing him how, and when he 
rightly pulled the switch, the light shone even for him. 

Then he knew joy all over his face; and round now the torch 
went among them, their heads crowding upon it, crying out 
“me next!” every one having a try, until it went back to the 
original holder, who stuck it with decision within the band of 
his moocha, as who should say: “this thing is mine." 

He got from Cobby an underglance of reproach. . . . 

And as Cobby was being led away, the man ran, put the 
torch and Cobby’s hat with haste and stealth into Cobby’s 
hand, and walked away out, poor but honest. 

Cobby and the Zulu were then led along one of several cor¬ 
ridors that rayed from that central room—a long corridor 
upon which rock-rooms opened, out of whose moody vaults 
floated voices in talk, moans, calls to the warders passing, 
voices of man and of woman, until the echoing steps bent into 
a second corridor to the left, where Cobby and the Zulu were 
soon made to stoop into a room, and the warders fastened 
across the door a bar, over or under which a body could not 
pass. 

Cobby then examined the room with his torch, saw that it 
was circular and lofty, thirty feet across, and in it three men 


78 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


asleep on the rock-floor; in the centre of the floor a hole a 
foot across, into which when he put the torch its beam burned 
upon the surface of water beneath. 

The air was heavy and hot, moist, noisome, an offensive 
smell pervading the place; but, tired of their night’s effort and 
failure, the two fell down and slept soundly. 


XI 


DZINIKULU 

W HAT fate now awaited him, awaited his camp, Macray, 
Panda (the Zulu with him), Cobby asked himself 
many times a day—though between day and mid¬ 
night was not the least difference in that place, where the eyes 
strained in vain to descry the hand, however crazily nigh 
they stared; so that, just to see light. Cobby would switch on 
his torch-light anon, always with a miserly economy, like one 
who sips liqueur, lest the little dry-cell, running down, should 
leave his eyeballs quite bereaved of light. 

How the prison-people measured time he did not know—in 
that room of his time was abolished, but for the clock which 
the stomach automatically became, the prisoners all acquiring 
a pretty precise consciousness of meal-times—two meals a day, 
as it seemed, being given, when three men brought a board 
supporting calabashes, and a torch, the prisoners peering for 
them at the bar across the low-arched opening; and always the 
same food in the calabash—a mass called “poospoos,” but 
much of it, and described as “very nice” by Cobby, who in 
his diary writes a detailed account of its preparation—corn- 
meal being put into a pot pierced with holes, and this pot hung 
inside another in which meat is stewed: so the steam from the 
meat penetrates and cooks the meal, which then, as poospoos, 
is eaten. 

But weeks of it: how many Cobby had no idea; and in 
white light now he saw his fault—hot-headedness, failure of 
restraint, he having talked too hotly and haughtily to a sover¬ 
eign, in the hollow of whose hand his life and his followers’ 

79 


80 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

lives were—a sovereign who was also a savage. Reflecting on 
it now, he wondered that he still lived even that death-in-life 
there, with his back against the wall, his legs out before him, 
his hung head staring at nothing. Here one did not determine 
the surface-tension of bubbles, nor count the droplets in a 
cubic centimetre of the water-vapour that one breathed and 
breathed. Europe was a dream now. 

And for how long? for years? for life? till madness came? 
He had hoped that he would be “tried,” as Rolls had been, 
would be given a chance to speak, to plead, to appeal to human 
reason; but in the course of weeks this hope forsook him. 

Meantime, however, his situation was not like “solitary con¬ 
finement,” for here was much fellowship: he spoke with his 
Zulu; the three Wa-Ngwanya conversed together; and one of 
these, an elderly man of rank, whose name was Esingwe, im¬ 
prisoned for agitation against a law, adopted Cobby as a lis¬ 
tener, and, finding out Cobby whenever Cobby flashed the 
torchlight, would scramble to sit near, and give once more at 
great length the tale of his sorrows and wrongs. In vain 
Cobby again and again protested that he understood scarcely 
anything of it; the speaker did not realize this; and still the 
machine that spoke spoke on, speaking not so much to be 
understood as just to speak. Moreover, the speaker had found 
out that the Zulu at least understood much, as a Spaniard 
understands some, Italian, and at special points he would insist 
that the Zulu should explain to Cobby, he waiting, nodding, 
until the explanadon was made, and then continuing the end¬ 
less tale. “What a fate, this tongue and this tale!” thought 
Cobby when it had long gone on; and then—suddenly—one 
day—it came like a revelation—he found himself understand¬ 
ing it all! 

“Now I am understanding him!” Cobby cried gladly in Se- 
Ngwanya to Panda: “curious! the power comes, not gradually, 
but suddenly.” 

“You understand me now?” said the gossip. “Na! now 


DZINIKULU 


81 


me tell you all, all; and now you send messages to the Sinder- 
ngabya: maybe he let you out”—this Sinder-ngabya (or 
“Guardian of the Sad”) being a dignitary to whom prisoners 
had the privilege of sending messages by an official who came 
at intervals to collect messages; and thenceforth Cobby did 
send messages, saying that he had come with a good motive, 
that, anyway, Panda, who had only obeyed his commands, 
might well be pardoned, while, as to the men of his camp, 
their innocence was complete. 

But he never had any answer; and that baleful air began to 
sap his vitality. 

However, soon after the fourth of his messages, an event 
arose for him—a visitor. 

This was Dzinikulu, one of the late King’s three brothers, of 
whom Spiciewegiehotiu had beheaded two. 

Mooning as usual against his wall, Cobby saw an invasion of 
light, and one of his warders peered in, calling eagerly: “Um- 
lungo! come!” and he whispered in a flurry: “Prince Dzini¬ 
kulu to see you—na! You ukukonza (do obeisance) : maybe 
he do good for you”; and, drawing Cobby out to stand in the 
corridor, he ran off. 

Then all in torchlight the royalty came, brow-bound with 
ivory, beplumed in crimson with the egret’s tuft, “and saluted 
me with no little dignity in quite a Zulu style” (Cobby writes). 
“His mantle not being wetted, I divined that he must have 
come under ‘The Elephant’ in some kind of boat rather than 
on a man’s back, for Dzinikulu is a very big being, man of 
forty-eight, say, with a mass of full-face, and eyes from whose 
corners peer intrigue and experienced caution. He stood with 
one leg cocked forward, and said to me: ‘You send messages 
to the Sinder-ngabya; the Sinder-ngabya report them to me, 
as the Great-great gone away from Eshowe on a tour to visit 
other towns: so me come to hear your complaint.’ Now he 
waved away the torch-bearers, saying to them: ‘Count six- 
three (i.e. nine) six hundred times {i. e. 216 times,), then 


82 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

come back’; and as soon as he and I were alone in darkness, 
he said in a lower tone: ‘Trust in me: maybe you and me 
think the same things.” 

“(My translation of their words, by the way, is not, in one 
sense, exact; but since it is based upon my knowledge of the 
genius of their speech, upon my knowledge of how an English 
language invented by them would be spoken, it is, in another 
sense, exact: for whoever has translated a tone, has translated 
everything. What is amusing is that some writers on Africa 
make negroes speak in a lofty sort of tone like Ezekiel, with 
verbs ending in ‘eth,’ rather confirming what I often think that 
untrained intellects have a kind of liking, a preference, for 
untruth.) 

“He then wanted to know of me exactly with what objects 
and hopes I had come to Wo-Ngwanya, and I told him frankly 
all, explaining how my object was the Queen’s good; on which 
he, compressing my arm with his fingers, stood silent, until he 
said: ‘So you say: how she to know that it true?” 

“ ‘From the fact that I, have taken so much trouble to come 
to her,’ I answered. 

“On this I could hear him chuckle in his gruff way, and 
mutter to himself: ‘Maybe, if she believe all that, she go!’ 
and I understood then that I have an ally in Dzinikulu, who 
hankers to see the back of his Queen, that he may reign in her 
stead. 

“‘You will tell her all that!’ he said close and low, com¬ 
pressing my arm: ‘maybe she believe! Anyway, me and you 
bake bread together against Mandaganya and Sueela: me and 
you together beat everybody.’ 

“ ‘Who is Mandaganya?’ I asked him. 

“ ‘Witch-doctoress—mother of Sueela. Spiciewegiehotiu 
foolish with love for Sueela: so Mandaganya powerful. Two 
months ago Spiciewegiehotiu say publicly she will take for 
her husband Sandelikatze, Sueela’s brother, the executioner. 
Everybody clap their hand on their mouth; everybody say 
Spiciewegiehotiu go too far, too far, too far. Next full moon 


83 


DZINIKULU 

she marry Sandelikatze. Sandelikatze is dirt! Sueela is 
dirt! Mandaganya is dirt! Everybody say Spiciewegiehotiu 
must be mad! She care nothing for Sandelikatze—Sande¬ 
likatze is dirt! but she in love with Sueela—na! she marry 
Sueela’s brother to please Sueela. When she do, all Wo- 
Ngwanya go against her. Then me and you bake bread to¬ 
gether—wait, wait. Sueela and Mandaganya will fight hard, 
for if Spiciewegiehotiu go down, or go away, what will such 
dirt be? Corpses without heads. But me and you fight hard, 
too; me and you beat everybody.’ 

“I then said to him: ‘Yes, but when? Can you set me 
free? I am becoming ill, my teeth may decay, my clothes are 
filthy. . . . How long have I been here?’ 

“He said ‘a month,’ adding: ‘Me can’t set you free, but me 
think you go free. If Spiciewegiehotiu was going to kill you, 
she kill you long ago: she have some reason in her head not to 
kill you, me not know what it is. Soon she come back from 
The North; you send her message; beg her pardon-” 

“This I cut short, telling him that that I should never, never 
do. 

“ ‘Proud man—na! induna,’ he went. ‘Still, you get free— 
me think so. Before the Queen went away, the old guest¬ 
house in the sigodhlo was pulled down, now a new one is put 
up, and a certain person said in my ear that Sueela said in his 
ear that she have reason to believe that this is done for you— 
not likely, but maybe so. When the Queen come back, me 
going to counsel her to cut your head off, and be done; then, 
maybe, she set you free.’ 

“All this, insubstantial as it all was, comforted my misery not 
a little; and I then proceeded to sound him about the prospects 
of Panda, about the camp, about Macray. And now a terrible 
blow was in store for me: for he answered unconcernedly: 
‘No trouble about your camp: they all killed, except six-four 
((ten). Your Zulu who shot the Mo-Ngwanya that night had 
his right arm broken, then his right eye burnt out, then his 
head torn off.’ 


84 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


“It made me sick. Enfeebled as I was, I had to cling a 
little to the savage. To think that Woman can be so hard 
and heartless . . . ! 

“I asked him if the shot Mo-Ngwanya had died, and he 
answered: ‘Eheh (Yes), he died. Belly went rotten.’ 

“‘But I, too, was threatened, if he should die!’ I cried: 
‘I shall not be set free! And all my men, but ten, ruthlessly 
massacred for nothing! How unreasonable! How brutishly 
unmanlike!’ 

“To this he answered, patting my arm: ‘No, you wrong. 
Strong mind, Spiciewegiehotiu. When she have reason, she 
kill, kill, kill; but she not kill a fly without reason. She and 
me not friends, but—strong mind, eheh! clear, not brutish. 
You come to take her away; she capture you. Suppose she 
have reason not to kill you: you think she going to leave 
forty of your men round you to help you take her away? 
No, she kill them. She spare ten; sell them as slaves; take 
the price of them for herself.’ 

“‘But my waggons!’ I cried, ‘all my implements and 
baggage-!’ 

“ ‘Oh, they all there in the royal park,’ he answered, ‘you 
never get them again. She love wealth—cattle and cattle’s 
worth; grasping; close-fisted—na!’ 

“‘She will not know how to use them!’ I cried. ‘And 
Panda! Can you not set Panda free? He has done nothing! 
And Macray—how about Macray?’ 

“ ‘Sir Caray?—“Caray” we call him- You trouble 

about him?’ 

“ ‘Why not?’ I asked him—‘my servant and comrade?’ 

“ ‘Comrade?’ said he in a tone of irony, very surprising to 
me; nor, when I demanded of him why he questioned that 
Macray is my comrade, did he at once answer, but presently 
said: ‘Councillors and princes cannot gabble everything like 
gossips before a hut-door: a string pull them here, and a 
string pull them there. Maybe when me and you know one 
another better, me tell you something. For now, you no 




85 


DZINIKULU 

trouble about Sir Caray. You in prison, Caray living like 
a headman. Spiciewegiehotiu give him a kraal in Sitiwe (a 
west district of Eshowe), five huts in his park, seven incekus 
(Queen’s-servants), she give him twelve bags of money, a 
horse, two cows, goats, rugs, wood, guns, cloth, from her 
store-huts. He go to speak with her, and she receive him: 
but they say it is Sueela he go to see. He go hunting down 
the river; he lounge about the town; he get a lot of girls round 
him, he make them all cry out laughing, and hide their eyes, 
he give feasts at night, me hear he drink a lot of tivala 
(liquor), and they say two girls gone wrong after him. But 
it is Sueela he want: he glance at Sueela, Sueela glance at 
him. Sueela no good—loose like her mother before her. 
She look aside upon a man with a mocking eye that make a 
man fancy she scorn him: if he not daring, he not get her; 
but, if he daring, he get her. Not yet eighteen—five lovers: 
me could give you their names—na! count them off on my 
fingers—one, two, three, four, five. You tell Spiciewegiehotiu 
that, she fly into a passion, she call you liar; but everybody 
know it, except Spiciewegiehotiu, and Spiciewegiehotiu know 

it, too, inside her nose. A certain person said in my ear- 

They come for me! You wait—you get free; me and you 
bake bread together; me work for you.’ He added louder, 
as the torches approached: ‘Me report your case to the 
Great-great,’ and, mutually saluting, we parted.” 



XII 


THE QUEEN’S RETURN 

A FTER this a stretch of time that seemed like five or 
six days passed for Cobby, and then again an un¬ 
expected torch invaded his darkness. In its light he 
saw a white face—Douglas Macray’s, and with Macray and 
the warder a servant of Macray’s burdened with a buck-skin 
bag, which was pushed into the prisoner’s room, while Macray, 
stooping in, cried out merrily: “Well, baas, here we are!— 
in the stations of life to which it has pleased God to call us. 
I prefer Bond Street myself, but this ain’t bad for a month 
or two.” 

The torch being now gone, Cobby switched on his flash¬ 
light a little to see his “servant and comrade,” who, smoking 
a cigar, had flung himself on the floor by the bag. 

“Not bad for you , apparently,” Cobby said, sitting before 
him. 

“That’s what I meant, inkoos. Oh, well, fortune of war, 
you know. Fact is, old Spicie of the throne has fallen head 

and ears in love with me-” 

“Absurd!” cried Cobby high, with a laugh. 

“Why so, baas? Girls in Europe say that I’m rather a 
good-looking boy.” 

“Oh, quite; but you misconceive the quality of minds of 
the lady-” 

“What do you know about her, isinduna? She hates you 
like poison.” 

“Well, and I hate her like poison!” leapt from Cobby’s 
mouth, and then he felt that this was childish. 

86 




THE QUEEN’S RETURN 87 

“That’s all right, then,” said Macray. . . . “No, she ain’t in 
love with me really, nor yet I with her. Handsome thing— 
but lives in an enchanted castle, too much trouble to get at, 
let her go to the devil: it’s the Sueela gazelle I’ve got my 
gun on. Spicie’s coming back from the country today, 
couriers have come in screaming that she is near, so I, went 
to a nigger that they call the Sinder-ngabya, and managed 
to get permission to go to the waggons, now in her park, to 
get you some cigars—here they are in this bag, with a mass 
of fruit and things. . . .” 

“Good, good,” muttered Cobby, “and another torch, I hope, 
you have brought, and clothes, and matches-” 

“Oh, Gee, I forgot about matches and things-” 

“Then, how, Macray, am I to light-?” 

“Here—I’ve got matches: take these.” 

“And a toothbrush, I hope-” 

“Oh, Gee, I never thought of toothbrushes. You don’t need 
a toothbrush in Wo-Ngwanga, baas: the niggers clean their 
teeth by eating nuts and hard foods. Look at me— I’ve got 
no top teeth, and get along all right.” 

“I see. So I in all things am to become a copy of you— 
is this what you so calmly contemplate?” 

Macray chuckled. “You might do worse, inkoos: here am 
I living like a nigger prince—Edward, the black prince, say, 
and you like Jonah in the ‘Elephant’s’ belly, with no chance, 
I think, of being vomited out.” 

“How, though, has this come to pass?” Cobby asked, peer¬ 
ing without seeing: “I don’t understand. Or, if it is under¬ 
standable that I, the chief, am punished, and you, a second¬ 
ary, pardoned, why is Panda in prison, and you free?” 

“Ask me another—a woman’s whim: I was born lucky, 
thanks to the immortal little star that winked and worked over 
my birth-hour. Besides, the girl by habit is down on foreign 
blacks who attack her: I must tell you that the Zulu voorlooper 
who shot her bodyguard was tortured, all our lot, but ten, 
killed, and-” 



88 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“I know,” Cobby said with a bent head. 

And at once Macray sat up in the dark, full of interest. 
“Oh, you know,” said he: “how do you?” 

“I was told.” 

“By one of the warders, no doubt.” 

This Cobby did not answer, understanding that Dzinikulu’s 
visit was secret; but this silence gave the secret to Macray, 
who had come mainly to learn it; and he now bluntly said: 
“You have had a visit from Dzinikulu, baas. Now, haven’t 
you?” 

At the indelicacy of which insistence Cobby answered with 
a puckered brow of protest: “Don’t you gather that I do 
not desire to speak of this?” 

“That means that you have” said Macray; “and now I 
want to warn you. Let old Spicie once learn of this visit, 
and all’s up with you, and perhaps with Master Dzinikulu, 
too. I may tell you that this man was seen to leave Eshowe 
in the dead of night and come toward ‘The Elephant,’ for, 
of course, there are eyes that spy for Mandaganya and Sueela: 
so they suspect that he came to visit you, in which case his 
motive is known—to ally himself with you in any plot to 
carry off Spicie. Now, any such plot is foredoomed to fail¬ 
ure—I tell you so. It is true that Dzinikulu leads a power¬ 
ful faction hankering to see the old royal house restored, but 
Spicie is going to whip him easy every time. Don’t you be 
drawn into anything with that princely nigger. If we had 
a man with the experience of Rolls, something might be done; 
but Master Rolls is now at the antipodes of heaven where 
pitchforks are all the rage-” 

At which Cobby with a shaken head, shaking the offence off 
him, sighed: “How offensive you can be, Macray! Dzin¬ 
ikulu, too, is crass, but not with that merry excess of yours.” 

Macray meditated on this in the dark—did not like! but 
only said: “Right you are, baas—I forgive you. I think in 
some former existence I was a millionaire like my namesake, 
the millionaire, and so much fine gold made me a course 



THE QUEEN’S RETURN 89 

brute, like the famous King Midas. Yet I seem to get along 
all right like that. . . . Anyway, have no truck with Master 
Dzinikulu! death’s the consequence. As it is, nobody seems 
to understand why you aren’t dead already. Is Spicie keep- 
ing you alive here as a sort of torture before she kills you? 
Lord knows! Twice I’ve approached her to ask what she 
means to do about you, and each time the same reply: ‘You 
will see’—nothing more. 1 believe that she means to keep 
you here to tempt Dzinikulu into putting his foot into it, and 
then do for you and him together. Sueela, before going away, 
told her mother Mandaganya-” 

“You seem to be quite in the counsels of Sueela and Man¬ 
daganya!” Cobby exclaimed. 

In his chuckling way Macray answered: “Sueela is des¬ 
tined to be near and dear to me, baas. I never thought a 
nigger girl could so poison the liver of men with longing and 
yearning. And Sueela’s a true nigger. Most of these Wa- 
Ngwanya show traces of an Arab origin, as the Zulus do— 
handsome some of ’em; but Sueela is your distilled attar of 
nigger: ink-black, slant forehead, flat-nose—sounds ugly, and 
yet, by some miracle of Spring, old Sue ain’t ugly. We 
didn’t see her well that night in the hut: if ever you do, see 
if that skipping kid on the hills don’t captivate your kidneys. 
Great big head, bulging out at the temples, bulging behind, 
bulging everywhere—beautiful—bursting with brains; and 
her great ogling eyes, alluring and raining raillery upon the 
universe of boys; and then her figure—her neck straighter 
than a straight line—taller still than Spicie, and lither: from 
the tip of her breast to the tip of her projected toe is the long 
concave of one perfect curve—she seems stretched to pirouette. 
And see her dance!—for every caper she cuts you cut one, 
too, or wish to, as if your nervous system was switched on 
to her activity. And the health of her youth—the crimson 
of her tongue and gums—her row of little teeth—you know 
before you smell her that her mouth is sweet like south-winds 
of these mountains, and the sweet whisp of slime that flies 



90 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

from a heifer’s lips. Ay, and something very venerial in 
the beast—Eve in excess—gross rats-bane—the Black Plague 
I call her. And she ain’t no prude, now; it’s a case of ‘all 
right’ between her and me. Not that she’s a bit in love with 
me: / know what’s working in her—curiosity: wants to find 
out what a white sweetheart is like; but when I once win her, 
I shall know how to hold her. The difficulty is to win her 
outside the town, for, if she’s caught, decapitation may re¬ 
sult. But there’s a field of sugar-cane half a mile out that 
I have in my eye. Whatever gods may be specially made 
sugar-cane to grow for happy lovers—a regiment of ferrets 
couldn’t discover the cooing two in there. Unfortunately, the 
edges of the leaves scratch one, and if-” 

But here the lover’s effusion, to which Cobby sat listening 
with cynical eyebrows, was interrupted by the arrival of a 
torch, and by an eager warder beckoning, saying: “Come! 
You free!” 

Cobby and Macray sprang upright, both pale, Macray star¬ 
ing from the warder to Cobby, and back again. 

“The Great-great come?” he asked. 

“Eheh! She just come. She set him free.” 

“And Panda?” asked Cobby. 

“No! only you. Come! Come!” 

Cobby, his heart thumping in him, hurried to Panda to say 
quick and low: “Keep heart—I shall refuse to be free with¬ 
out you. There are some comforts in that bag—here are 
matches. . . .” 

Then out, and along two corridors, to a central room, 
Macray all at a loss, saying: “Oh, woman, in our hours of 
ease . . .” 

Then down a rock-passage to two steps, where two sanjwes 
(sort of punt) lay torchlit on the water, in one of which two 
household officers, braves brow-bound with spotted cat skin 
over their black plumes, awaited Cobby; and Macray, in the 
sanjwe that had brought him, followed the paddles and 
torches of the other through a league of gloom between the 



THE QUEEN’S RETURN 91 

lagoon and the roof of rock. Anon his eyes moved from 
side to side, full of interest, of meditation. . . . 

It was about four in the afternoon, when they shot out 
from under the rock to the shore, Cobby’s eyes now blinded 
with excess of light, and when he saw the breadth of heaven, 
the freedom and holiday of the clouds, and breathed the 
bounty of the breezes, he was like one bom out of nothingness 
into all: tears stung his lids; he wished to kneel. But his 
two companions, titanic with their black plumes, and gallant 
with the black ox-tails in their kilts, on their legs, at their 
elbows, all wafted backward by the wind, stalked steadily 
on a thousand yards to the great gate of the town, and on into 
the awna, or square. 

This now presented a thronged appearance, all the top 
quarter of it being packed with phalanxes of warriors in their 
various war-dress, making there a region of spears sheening 
in the sun, then the populace packed, then looser throngs, 
among whom Cobby’s conductors paused, one of them remark¬ 
ing to him: “The Queen salute the people: we wait here.” 

And twenty minutes they waited, until a group entered the 
square through the sigodhlo gate, and stepped on to the plat¬ 
form. The Wa-Ngwanya being tall, Cobby could hardly see, 
until, to his astonishment, one of his conductors, without say¬ 
ing anything, lifted him bodily like a child, to see: and now 
he saw Spiciewegiehotiu seated in the armchair of stone, 
meditating with her fingers at her face; standing about her 
two semi-circles of men, at her left Sueela, and at her right 
a shining being—Mandaganya—tall—shining in a mantle of 
snake-skin: but whoever has not seen how like silver this 
filmy substance beams in sunlight, will hardly imagine the 
show and majesty of the witch’s aspect. 

She, stepping to the front, went down on hands and knees, 
and set to uttering the Queen’s sibonga, or list of names; on 
which Cobby’s lifter deposited him quickly, pushing him to 
his hands and knees: for on hands and knees the square was 
now uttering sibonga with the doctoress. As when in a church 


92 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

the clergyman turns toward Jerusalem and Mecca to murmur: 
“I believe in god, the father, who has a son. ... I believe 
in the holy church at Jerusalem ... in the resurrection of 
the body . . .” and, with heads of docility bent, the wor¬ 
shippers murmur it an instant late, chasing his lips, and the 
monotone of the murmur solemnly fills the church, so these 
solemnly murmured with docility after Mandaganya the 
sibonga of Spiciewegiehotiu: “White Lamb Washed Come up 
out of the Water, Cow that Toss the Nations, Owl that Startle 
the Dark with Sinister Singings, Dark Cantatas, Deer that 
Speed Fleeter than the Breeze . . .” and so on. After which 
there were some movements and manceuvrings of the 
regiments for several minutes; and then Spiciewegiehotiu 
sprang up, stepped to the platform’s very edge, stretched her 
mouth, and in a dead soundlessness shouted aloud, with a 
laughing suggestion of countenance. But though Cobby was 
now once more upraised in his conductor’s arms, only a phrase 
here or there was brought down out of the hollow hall of the 
air by some breeze to his ear. “Me come back to you! hum, 
hum, hum. Me see all Wo-Ngwanya, hum, hum. Wo- 
Ngwanya broad like the vault of heaven, hum, hum. Every¬ 
where doves cooing, everywhere winds blowing. . . . Winds 
in the hills cooing like doves; doves cooing like winds in the 
hills, hum, hum. Me laugh to see it! me cry to see it, hum, 
hum, hum. Me want to make Wo-Ngwanya broader still for 
you; broader still, and happier, hum, hum. Now me salute 
you—my sons—my brothers—my sisters—my own. . . .” 
now, overcome with emotion, she threw her arm, turning away 
her face, then turning again girl-like in the grip of a graceful 
indecision, but, failing to say anything, gave up, and tripped 
back, crying and laughing at herself, to recline in the throne. 

Cobby’s face was distorted into a sort of grin—of interest, 
of greed. . . . 

Meanwhile, he was full of question as to whether his re¬ 
lease had been timed, with design, that he might witness all 
this? If so, with what object? To impress him with a 


93 


THE QUEEN’S RETURN 

sense of her mass and majesty, that he might refrain thence¬ 
forth from machinations? Or just in coquetry to show her¬ 
self dressed in her royalty?—a fancy which so flattered him, 
that he even found himself wondering whether his conductor 
had held him uplifted out of pure courtesy, or—by instruc¬ 
tions? Flattering fancies, clouded with doubts and bodings. 
There he stood released: but for how long? and for what 
reason? “You will see,” she had said to Macray: and there 
is the frying-pan, and there is the fire. . . . 


XIII 


THE GUEST-HOUSE 

A S soon as the function of the royal salute was over, 
and the regiments had been marched away through 
the various gates of the square, Cobby’s two conduc¬ 
tors led him up the square through the now looser crowd, 
in which was now some group-dancing and much curiosity 
and swarming after the new face, until the three came to the 
north (sigodhlo) gate of the square, where, when an ivory 
ring had been presented to the sentry there, the three were 
permitted to enter the sigodhlo. 

The black who had the ring then handed it to Cobby, say¬ 
ing: “With this you can pass out and in.” 

Cobby’s heart started. . . . 

Straight before them northward stood the gate of the royal 
park, and after walking upward to this, and passing half- 
round the royal park, they passed, still northward, up an 
avenue dim beneath enormous yellow-wood trees, which led 
them to the gate of another park: and this they entered. 

Here the first thing that Cobby saw through fronds of date- 
palm on his right was an aeroplane-wing, nor in the rush of 
his gladness could he refrain from rushing to it, and there 
in a glade surrounded by large-leaved bush stood his waggons 
buried in long-grass, with all his goods, given back to him. 

In his incredulity at luck so good, he ran back to ask a flood 
of questions, to which the giants, smiling down upon him, re¬ 
plied that they thought the things were to be his thenceforth; 
the waggons had been taken there that day from the Queen’s 
park. 


94 



THE GUEST-HOUSE 


95 


They then led him through a grove of greenery, out of which 
peeped here or there a hut, to a big hut, evidently brand-new— 
which, indeed, was the new-built “guest-house” of which 
Dzinikulu had told him. He had become aware of sounds of 
music, and in front of the hut found with flute and drum six 
men and three women, who received him with prostrations— 
his household-attendants. 

Out of the hut floated an odour of food, and in its roomy 
interior he found a meal of lamb, with yam pounded with 
butter, and eggs, watermelon, honey, and gaudy tarts made 
of grated cocoanut tinted pink, ultramarine and morinda- 
yellow, and gourds of spirit, to share in all which Cobby in¬ 
vited his conductors. “Nor from that moment,” he wrote 
later, “have I lacked any comfort.” 

He expected now a summons to the royal presence, to be 
told the reason of his release and of this free-handed treat¬ 
ment, but when two weeks passed, and no summons came, he 
was torn with indecision as to seeking an interview, that he 
might see her face, and plead for his Panda. “Near as I 
am to her,” he writes at this time, “my park the nearest to 
hers, sleeping within a few stone-throws of her, breathing the 
air she breathes, I might be at Cape Town for all the sign 
I have that she is alive, save a sight of her twice in the 
square, the sight of her sentinels at her gate, who salute me 
when I go by. I can’t stand it long: somehow to be in touch 
with her, or go mad, I think. 

“Yesterday afternoon I sent her Rolls’ American clock, 
expecting that she would, at any rate, acknowledge it and 
thank me; but no answer at all. Silly of me to send her 
that thing! whose silly insistence on ticking must have made 
her laugh at it and me. She will think that I, am pursuing 
her! seeking to force myself like a hungry dog upon her 
notice—which Almighty God forbid. I think that what made 
me send the clock was the fact, of which I first heard from 
my Sansiwana, that she ‘goes to White River to bathe’— 
‘White River’ being the name of the upper part of the river 


96 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

which, in the part flowing through the town, is called ‘The 
Gut,’ and below the town is called ‘Black River.’ But savages 
have such a slovenly habit in marking the hours of the day, 
that I could not learn from my servants at what hour she 
passes here northward for the sigodhlo-postern, and this may 
have put into my mind the sending her of a timepiece, with 
the idea that, if she learned to read it, and I learned the hour 
of her outing, I might spy upon her steps without much loss 
of time. I intend tomorrow to spent the forenoon in ambush 
watching for her.” 

This manoeuvre proving successful, he saw her from his 
lurking-place go past his park in a gay troop of twelve or 
thirteen girls, with two bodyguards bearing cloths; and thence¬ 
forth some portion of his forenoons was devoted to this 
singular species of research-work. Meanwhile, we see him 
full of self-reproaches for his neglect of Panda’s interests, a 
neglect due to his shrinkings from seeming to “force himself 
upon the notice” of the Queen; he, meantime, doing much 
roaming about the country, collecting and making drawings 
and photographs of specimens, investigating its geology, 
especially that of “The Elephant,” whose configuration, he 
says, “is entirely due to water-action, as in the Giant’s Cause¬ 
way, Fingal’s Cave, etc., the bed of the lake having under¬ 
gone some subsidence since the age of the water’s action upon 
the rock-roof. The water, though so stagnant-looking, is in 
motion, being discharged southward by a stream which flows 
into ‘Black River,’ as ‘The Gut’ is called when, after leaving 
Eshowe, it bends eastward for the sea. ‘The Elephant’s’ area 
is about a hundred and eighteen square miles, the ‘legs’ (I 
have seen seven) consisting of columns of black basalt, all 
hexagonal, in clusters two to seven hundred yards in diameter, 
and from five to twelve feet high. I, have twice ridden out 
to its west extremity, once with Macray, and made notes in 
No. III. One can climb to its top by an artificial stairway 
five miles out; but from no point of view have I been able to 
notice any resemblance to an elephant. It is said to contain 


THE GUEST-HOUSE 


97 


several hollows other than that prison within which I have 
passed so many dark hours: these I shall examine later, as 
I have already examined (with what little technical training 
I have in this direction) a singular structure in the plain out 
at ‘The Elephant’s’ extremity, the relics of a pyramid, nearly 
half as big as the pyramid of Shafra, and much more ancient 
(v. III.). This plain, being a haunt of a little deer like 
duiker-bok, easily portable, is also a huntsman’s paradise, 
and daily tempts me out there, my stallion, Ali, being a good 
goer, a broad-breasted roan, obviously Arab in breed, with 
a ponderous battery of the feet in cantering like a war-horse; 
one, I hear, of a very small stud, of which the Queen and 
Sueela own the two fleetest specimens, ‘Selim’ and ‘Mustapha.’ 
My possession of him, I find, has caused quite a jealousy in 
Macray! to whom has been accorded one of the small native 
horses, many of which show traces of zebra blood. Ali thus, 
at any rate, contributes a little to my self-support, but still 
leaves me all too much the parasite of a throne, the louse 
of a savage’s bounty. Every third morning, it appears, my 
Sansiwana repairs with a list of my needs in his head to a 
species of major-domo, over yonder within the sigodhlo, and 
in the afternoon the baskets, in due process, come in. It will 
not long do for me! She must submit herself. I have to be 
her master, not her pussy-cat, fed with milk. First of all, 
Panda: he must and shall be free. . . .” 

Meantime, we find scattered about the diary some very 
heated references to the “full of the moon”—the reported 
date of the Queen’s marriage with Sandelikatze, Sueela’s 
brother, the executioner—outbursts of laughter which can be 
called mad at the idea of this marriage—threats of interven¬ 
tion even at the cost of life—frettings at the vagueness of the 
rumours that he can gather on the subject—all this subsiding 
when he hears that “nobody know anything but that the mar* 
riage is put off,” and when the full moon passes, and no 
marriage takes place. 

Then there is a sight of Sandelikatze himself: “I was 


93 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

walking home—about four p. M. . . . with a bagful of 
flora. . . . Paused in the market to watch the traffic . . . the 
Bon Marche of Eshowe . . . from micaschist (ground to 
sprinkle the hair with a blue glitter) to twine of hebiscus- 
fibre and rope of ife, and soap boiled from salsola-ashes, 
from guinea-fowls in great numbers to frogs (pyxicephalus), 
and locust-powder (eaten here with honey as by John the 
Baptist;), fish predominating, a considerable trade in this be¬ 
ing carried on with the dominions of Daisy, mullet from the 
rivers, ready cooked for sale, gaudy with coloured condiments, 
in big basins, barracouta and kingfish from the sea—this 
barracouta being known by them to be sometimes poisonous, 
anon all a family will die of it, yet, it is so nice, they still 
venture. Then I heard a herald or town-cryer calling some¬ 
thing farther up, and remarked up there a drum beating and 
a knot of people, whom I found to be looking on at three 
executions. There were five armed men, three wizards, and—* 
may I, say ‘my rival’? my ineffable competitor? already be¬ 
fore whom lay the headless body of a woman; and of the two 
men awaiting his handicraft, what was my dismay to find 
that one was Esingwe, my fellow-prisoner, the teller of that 
endless tale in the dark! After his handiwork on the woman, 
Sandelikatze, ax in hand, his legs apart, was in the act of 
glancing up with darting eyes that asked ‘how’s that?’ quite 
as Rolls had once described him to me; but the lightness and 
litheness and live-wire briskness of the picture cannot be 
described. He was nude, but for a few strings of leather: 
and never saw I the human body so beautified and elevated 

to the plane of the ideal- I thought of the Discobolus in 

black marble—the clean-cut creation of the hills and dales of 
the legs, the levity and enfranchisement of the figure. . . . 
Had she not seen this, I asked myself? and has he been se¬ 
lected as a husband only for Sueela’s sake, and not in the least 
for his own? I abhor a wanton. Let me go back to civiliza¬ 
tion, and forget that there are savages. . , , And yet here, I 



THE GUEST-HOUSE 


99 


know, is the Reality of the world: not Sussex, but the Lim¬ 
popo; man being a dark animal, with a few whites by a local 
freak, like white horses, white mice; nor are meadow-cows 
and polo-ponies the reality of the animal kingdom, but gnus 
and crocodiles and the black ant. But what dismayed me in 
this scene was, firstly, the nonchalance of those market-peo¬ 
ple, trafficking there while, three hundred yards away, three 
human beings were losing their heads; and then my Esingwe 
. . . I had not gathered that he was to die! It seems, then, 
that one may be kept months in prison, and then be led out 
to death! In which case, what of my Panda? How I have 
delayed and delayed!—he must think himself forgotten. 
No more delay. . . . When my Esingwe smiled with me, I 
pressed forward to shake his hand. He showed no pallor; 
said to me: ‘Happiness to you: me go to spear other deer,’ 
on which a woman near to him bit her lip to repress her 
tears, for the women consider it ignominious to weep for grief 
or pain. Meantime, the Queen’s elect looked askance at me, 
with, I think, an eye that implied: ‘I will not be found un¬ 
willing when you are sent to me.’ And then I hurried 
away. . . .” 

The next afternoon he presented himself at the Queen’s gate 
in a clean shirt buttoned up, bearing as a present for her 
Majesty, three boxes of matches, a little mirror, and a golden- 
syrup tin—a little object of which he knew that a billion 
savages, among them Caesar and Plato and Shakespeare, bend¬ 
ing to it all the brain-power of the “sages” and the ages, 
could not have come near to creating. But he was told that 
the Queen was in the square, and would be for four after¬ 
noons, as usual monthly, in her function as a judge. 

He then went down to the square, and, standing somewhat 
back of the platform, saw her for hours. 

“The whole,” he says, “is conducted with as much formality 
as with us. In fact, lawyers, juries, ‘judges’ law-courts, seem 
to be an African idea (see Mungo Park); but here the jury, 


100 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

who consist of twenty, all elderly, and sit on stools before 
her, only function when she consults them, she otherwise 
being the sole judge, and wore, I think, an official vestment, 
a kaross of golden-jackal, soft-flowing, and three golden eagle 
feathers, a la Prince of Wales, beneath a brow-band of gold. 

“I witnessed eleven cases that afternoon, civil and criminal, 
the parties with their barristers standing on the platform 
between Queen and jury, a knot of law-officers about the 
throne, while a small crowd stood before the platform. 

“No little logic-chopping and fluency of tongue was exhib¬ 
ited in the arguments; and only in one case did I disagree with 
the sentence. When they took oath it was by ‘the White 
Lamb Washed,’ of whose face I again and again got a good 
view, and saw her brow always grave with care, or perplexed 
with doubt. 

“All the defendants assumed an amusing air of indif¬ 
ference—ostentatiously yawning, and so on; but at one she 
stamped, suddenly crying out: ‘You are a fool!’ upon which 
he dropped, as if shot; and another was borne from her un¬ 
able to repress his sobs, when, after sentencing him, she took 
and pressed his hand. Two were women, to one of whom 
the husband of both, now dead, had given a costly kaross all 
embroidered in blue, and both volubly claimed it. When the 
discussion had lasted long, the Queen appealed to the jury. 
The jury disagreed. On which she covered her eyes with her 
hand, and presently said: ‘Me cannot tell which of you is 
such an artful liar; but me artful, too; so me take the kaross 
for myself, you see’; on which an official beside her took it 
from the woman to her left. ‘A too facile way out, mother 
dear!’ I thought. But that was not the end: her eyes were 
still covered; I now understand that she was spying at the 
women through her fingers; and she saw that the one on her 
right pushed her lips far out, as they do when resentful, while 
the other smiled at the confiscation: and now suddenly the 
Queen laughed, tossed the kaross to the one on her right, and 
said to the smiler: ‘You think me not see into you? You 


THE GUEST-HOUSE 101 

wear “The Elephant” for a month instead.’ The crowd stood 
open-mouthed at it. . . . 

“When the next case commenced, I strolled past the plat¬ 
form and down the square, without once bothering to glance 
backward to see if she saw me.” 


XIV 


IN SUSPENSE 

A S soon as the Queen had moved homeward within her 
troop of damsels from her “White River” bath the 
next forenoon, Cobby made haste to present himself 
at the royal gate; but was told there that “the Great-great” 
was about to dine, that he should try in the afternoon, and 
then only after seven days, when the mopato rites would be 
ended. 

This fretted and offended Cobby. “These empty, restless 
days,” he wrote; and: “henceforth I shun the sight of her as 
she shuns mine—insolent little white nigger.” 

Yet for three afternoons more we find him standing a wit¬ 
ness of court-cases, one afternoon even standing in front of 
the throne, to see in what mood the Queen would look at 
him: but she did not seem to see him. Then for some after¬ 
noons more he stood witnessing mopato functions, of which 
he says: “Forty boys of fourteen to fifteen stood in a row 
before the throne, their nudity revealing the weals from the 
cuts of whips which covered them, these pains and circumcision 
being the initiation into citizenship: indeed, society here is 
organized on a mopato, or sort of Boy Scout, basis, one de¬ 
scribing oneself by mentioning one’s mopato, counting one’s 
age by the number of mopato functions which one has wit¬ 
nessed. . . . 

“The Queen in another garb of ceremony, a garment of 
yellow baize painted with black elephants, on her head a hel¬ 
met from which a pair of horns vaulted off, and in her right 
hand a javelin having a haft of ivory, seemed in very viva- 

102 


IN SUSPENSE 


103 


cious vein, and was frequently laughing, having now near 
her her Sueela in gay attire, also Mandaganya glittering in 
the sun’s light, a crowd round her, and in front of her a 
considerable crowd of militia and public, while of each boy 
in turn she asked: ‘What my name is?’ and when he had 
rattled off her string of names, she asked: ‘What the name 
of the headman of your mopato is?’ and, that string rattled 
off, she asked lastly: ‘What your name is?’ on which he 
rattled off the names which he had invented for himself— 
‘Snake that Bite the Lion,’ ‘Ichneumon that Eat the Crocodile’s 
Eggs’—swaggering egoisms just in the mood of the scutcheons 
invented for themselves by our own fantastic Kaffirs who 
‘came over with the Conqueror,’ as ‘Cave, Adsum’ (‘Look out 
for yourself, me am about’), ‘Dieu et Mon Droit’ (‘God and 
my Right’), and so on. It lasted some time, but no one, save 
me, seemed to have enough of it, she, all fluttered with gaiety, 
laughing out anon at the names invented. 

“After which each boy took up a ball of quartz (mill¬ 
stone) that lay at his feet; the crowd ran asunder; and she, 
at the platform’s edge, cried aloud: ‘Now, hamba —go!’ and 
clapped hands; upon which the boys started into racing. 
Then was agitation! vociferation! while the boys, handicapped 
with the rocks, ran in long files all around the awna, perhaps 
two miles—a cruel trial; and since they came home in a 
bunch, none well left, each resolved to win or drop dead, the 
excitement toward the end became ecstasy, the mob went mad. 
The winner, a tall fellow, all rib and leg, dropping his rock, 
darted upon the platform to fling his panting heart into her 
arms, she with shut lids, grave now, rubbing her face against 
his, our too motherly mother; then, patting his face, held to 
his lips a wine-cup, finally presenting him with spear and 
shield; and to the others she announced: ‘Well, you are 
men now; kill a lion, and quell a wife.’ ” 

Afterwards there was a mopato function of young girls, 
burned and wealed, whose ordeal consisted in bearing bur¬ 
dens of great weight; then of lads and older girls; and so on, 


104 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

for four days. Early on the fifth afternoon Cobby, in a spot¬ 
less shirt, made for the royal gate. 

But again to be disappointed: for he met at the gate, en¬ 
tering, a group of State-officials, among them Dzinikulu, who 
pretended not to see him: and, understanding that a council 
was about to be held, he went back to his park, to wait. 

Lying on the ground in a grove, he was glancing at his 
thermometer at 89°—a heat so rare in the shade up there, 
that the doves in the banana-bush had rather ceased to roll 
that rales of their throat, and the canaries, subdued by the 
heat, had hushed their craze of jubilee till the evening cool— 
when he was aware of Macray, conducted to him by a sigodhlo- 
officer: “Hallo, baas! not laid eyes on you for five days”; 
and, throwing himself down in the grove: “Hot today—offer 
us some tyvala.” 

As his face was already flushed, Cobby answered: “I un¬ 
derstand that you drink quite a lot of tyvala! In a climate 
like this you will acquire cirosis.” 

“What the devil’s that?—sounds like a liqueur. Leave me 
to my fate, inkoos—give a guest to drink,” he dropped at his 
length upon his back: “this ain’t bad here—for a time; on 
such a day, when the marrow of one’s back runs like butter, 
a young man’s fancy heavily turns to thoughts of love, to 
say nothing of a young woman’s, Mr. Tennyson —Souvent la 
chaleur d’un beau jour fait fillette rever a Vamour. . . 

Cobby’s eyebrows lifted. “You speak French, Ma¬ 
cray . . . ?” 

“You may bet, baas—been all over the place. But funny 
existence this of yours and mine here! What’s the idea? 
What are we waiting for? I expected that by now the ravens 
of the valley would have picked out your eyes; but not a 
bit of it: we eat the lotus of ease, we live like lords at a 
lady’s expense—what’s her game? Are you being fattened to 
be eaten—or what? Had an interview yet?” 

Cobby answered: “/ am waiting to see Panda free, and 
then at once I set about returning to civilization.” 


105 


IN SUSPENSE 

“Right you are! We two—and Sueela.” 

“Who? You jest.” 

“No, really, we take old Sue with us—Sue I call her, Susie- 
Susie. Seriously, baas, I seem to be gone on that nigger. 
Me can’t think of nothing else but you, Sue-Sue! And I see 
my way to abduct her all right. This is the very night of the 
plighting of our vows: we little two meet outside the town 
about eleven o’clock, and-” 

“What right-? Better be careful! You break the law 

of the land,” Cobby said with a warning eye. 

“Law of the land don’t trouble Douglas of that ilk, inkoos. 
And no one’s going to know, you know—Sueela’s too deep 
and fleet a Venus for that. I met her night-before-last in 

her mother’s grounds, and-” he related the story of the 

arranging of the rendezvous, Cobby listening with a shade of 
displeasure on his face; and presently Macray, reverting ever 
to the subject of his success in love, became irksome, Cobby 
now wishing him away, that he himself might return to seek 
the Queen’s face. Finally, he bid Macray come some other 
day, and, on finding himself free, at once set off, once more 
to try his luck at an interview, the sun still high among clouds 
like pools of silver shuddering cooler in the middle, like 
suns with sun-spots shuddering cooler—clouds moving south¬ 
ward before a breeze that blew the troops of trees into choruses 
of commotion, cooling the afternoon with a wafture as of 
fans, and, far astray in a heaven vaster than the heaven of 
Europe, a moon that looked a cloud of the heaven of heavens. 

After passing out of his gate, and southward down an 
avenue to the back of the Queen’s park, he was met by sounds 
of music, of singing, of outcries of girl-laughter, and he 
paused, again disappointed, for he thought that he recognized 
her voice. 

On creeping near to listen, he saw a little orifice in the 
woof of reeds that filled the interspaces between the poles of 
the enclosure, and, lying on his face, he applied his eye to it, 
to spy if she was there. 





106 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

He saw a glade in a thicket “rankly sylvan,” he writes, 
“with frond and fern, palmyra and wild date, wild coffee and 
orange, banana, castor-oil, all involved in whorls of convol¬ 
vulus, of wild vine and the flamboyant blooms of numerous 
climbers, she on her face in grass, not far from a frog-pond 
covered over with areas of lotus and arum, and before her, 
alone with her, a bacchant dancing—Sueela; and Selim, the 
Queen’s steed, with them, to which now and again she gave a 
nut. 

“X was spying at them some time. Until I was driven, or 
rather washed , away, I could not get myself to go. 

“Sueela wore a moocha of cotton cloth, close-clinging like 
the Egyptian kilt, without any mantle, while the Queen wore a 
mantle of cotton without any moocha, her calves swinging up¬ 
right as she lay, and here evidently was neglige and sweet-do- 
nothing—that day, indeed, being their monthly Sunday and 
nominal holiday, if all their days are not holidays. I think, 
though, that that might be a public good, if they dressed with 
a little greater elaboration—though I, on my side, had no 
right to be spying upon their privacy. Happily, the royal- 
motherly feet were clean and soft, and she obviously pays 
some attention to her toe-nails. The whole being of her is a 
thing good to eat with one’s teeth, fruit good for food, by 
heaven, and there I lay with her on the ground, near, near, yet 
hungry. She was smoking that long pipe of theirs, then from 
a bowl full of blue fruit {mawa) took one languidly to bruise 
it with her front teeth, then was gnawing nuts with wanton 
molars, half alaugh, casting the husks at an ibis, that anon 
by the pond cried out ‘Wal-wal-waV at her, while swallows 
swung down about her, magnetized like moths by her light 
and lire, and a lark, black and saffron, carolled above, and 
the green dove greeted her, in love with her and with lullaby, 
and it seemed to be in the greed of their heat for her that the 
monkeys rushed about the bush. 

“Meantime, Sueela danced to song after song, some of which 
I recognized as songs hummed about the town—the up-to-date 


IN SUSPENSE 


107 


creations of the community, as in Europe they sing the latest 
things from the music-halls: and very characteristic, ethno- 
graphically, most of them are—the so-called ‘python-song,’ for 
example, which Sueela twice sang: 

Touch me? 

Touch me? 

If me let you touch me, 

You’ll always be wanting to touch me. 

Taste me? 

Taste me? 

If me let you taste me, 

You’ll often be wanting to taste me. 

See me? 

See me? 

If me let you see me. 

You’ll run! and then you’ll run back. 

Smell me? 

Smell me? 

If me let you smell me, 

You’ll run and you’ll never come back. 

“Then outcries of laughter! (The python is highly prized 
as a dish, here as elsewhere, but its taste, as in the case of the 
bloater, excels its odour: and always after the list of its effects 
on the senses, the same outcries of laughter.) Sueela’s instru¬ 
ment was attached to her body, a species of merimba (two 
parallel rods, connected by laths across, under the laths being 
calabashes to act as sound-boards), she thrumming the laths 
with drumsticks with a fluency of Paderewski, and certainly 
she dances like a grace this girl, though with a certain ag¬ 
gressiveness and fierceness of heat not native to the Graces. 
In figure she is the female of her brother, the executioner, as 
perfectly turned out, though taller (for a girl)—a being es¬ 
sentially special and herself—excellent in some way or other, 
thoroughbred—big-headed, big-faced, big-eyed, everything 
rounded and smoothed to beauty as in good sculpture, her 
head all horned, a broad parting disparting it at the back to 
the nape, and nothing can portray the raillery and roguery of 


108 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

her ogling, her sauciness and scorn, her feminine message. 
Magdalen is the name of her! or will be when she comes to 
repent of the sun and of her youth. Yet, I was pleased to see, 
all her motions were modest, save for some moments when her 
sovereign danced with her, they holding each other, Zulu- 
fashion, round the haunch, and then their bodies, challenging 
each other, jostled and jazzed a little, to the popular 

Oh, rain, don’t keep him back, 

Oh, wind, don’t keep him long, 

Oh, ra’in, don’t keep him back, 

For me feel like a breezy tree. 

Me feel, me feel , me feel. 

Me feel like a breezy tree, 

Me feel, me feel, me feel, 

Me feel like a breezy tree, 

they, in their feelings, moving their shoulders sensitively, as 
when a flea is on the nerve of one’s back, and one works the 
shoulders uneasily. After which Sueela ‘cut rattang,’ as they 
say—though exactly what ‘rattang’ means I have been unable 
to discover: she jumps, coming down bent to the right, the 
right foot projected, with a lovely long concave from right 
toe to breast, left toe on the ground behind, wrists at ribs; then 
she jumps, coming down bent to the left, left foot projected, 
and so on, each jump very brisk and strict, definitely com¬ 
menced, definitely ended, and at each jump she clucks the 
tongue. And now the song was: 

Me wish my finger was a gun, 

Me’d shoot Mpanga as she run. . . . 

“I could not but reflect,” Cobby adds in his somewhat heavy 
way sometimes, “upon the heartlessness of this utterance: for 
I happen to know this Mpanga, a poor cripple who goes selling 
nju beans and oil of cucumber-seeds for salads, who with every 
step of her right foot stoops sharp to the right. She never 
‘run,’ poor girl, and if my finger was a gun, I’d cut it off, 


IN SUSPENSE 


109 


sooner than do her hurt. But such are the Wa-Ngwanya—a 
certain callousness of heart. I call them ‘the black French’— 
intelligent, gay, gallant, bon ami, but hard au fond, lacking 
in compunction. 

“The Queen, having danced a little, sat again; but presently 
rose again, now taking up a bowl, and, in moving toward the 
pond, muttered something close at Sueela’s ear; then at the 
pond filled the bowl. When I saw her lift it to her lips, I 
wondered that she should drink such water: I now know that 
the gesture was a pretence: for, pretending to drink, she 
stepped backward toward my chink, and, suddenly spinning, 
slung the water at my eye. Then fits of giggling! 

“The chink was so little, that it must have required no little 
quickness of eye to descry the shine of mine; but, as I could 
not imagine that the colour had been detected, I was hardly 
offended, though much abashed. I ran a little away; then, 
making my way round to the gate, sent in a request for an in¬ 
terview. 

“Quite fifteen minutes I had to wait in a very trying sus¬ 
pense; then came the answer: Not today, but tomorrow, I 
might see the Queen. . . . 

“I felt a species of relief at the delay!—strange. I crave 
and shrink; and no more know myself.” 


XV 


DZINIKULU MOVES 

C OBBY continues: “I then went back to my hut till the 
evening, when I set out for the funeral-wake of the sister 
of my friend Seshike, the blacksmith, to whom, in wan¬ 
dering about town one day, I showed how to upset iron; for, 
though they have considerable skill in forging, they could not, 
till now, bend a rod in a sharp angle, not knowing upsetting. 
Now the tidings of it has flown like fire, even reaching to the 
Queen’s ear, I hear, and Seshike, Rambya, and their fellow- 
smiths have overwhelmed me with presents. 

“It is remarkable how their culture advances to a given 
point, and then abruptly falls short. The average Mo- 
Ngwanya is ‘better educated,’ as Spencer would say, than a 
Lord Chief Justice or a Chinese ‘scholar,’ has more re-al 
knowledge—knowledge of things , as distinct from opinions— 
of geology, of the phenomena of soils, and crops, and stock, 
and metals: yet they could not upset iron! cannot make a 
screw-thread! cannot make sugar! Neither can a Chief Jus¬ 
tice; but he soon would, if he was as educated as they; and 
many men can. Their sugar-canes they just suck; but have 
abundance of honey, which they hive in hollowed blocks 
within the woods, where one is pestered by the persistence of 
honey-guide birds wooing one to follow them to the hives. 

“I made my way in moonlight down the awna, now solitary, 
and across the second bridge toward the East End, three differ¬ 
ent dogs fleeing from my ghost-face with growls—still: not 
flattering. Dogs, women, children: a woman may brave me 
till I am close, then, if alone, may suddenly take fright, think- 

110 


DZINIKULU MOVES 


111 


ing, ‘Oh, no, I’m off,’ and is gone flying, while the children, 
on seeing me, stand paralysed, bawling out, or flee with 
screams. 

“Eshowe being a garden-city, I found crowds of them spend¬ 
ing the evening in front of their grounds, shouting banter, 
laughter, gossip across long distances at one another, and, as 
throngs of brats were everywhere, and dancings going on to 
drums and handclapping, there was no lack of clatter and 
action: and still after eleven when I moved homeward the 
dancings were going on in the moonlight. I saw two women 
quarrelling, who confronted each other in formal conflict, 
leaning far forward, with their palms planted on their 
haunches, and rapid as the hoofs of a troop of horses patter¬ 
ing their tongues acted together, like a pair of pennants waving 
away together in a gale. I still feel amid them the species of 
surprise which, on visiting France in my teens, I experienced 
at hearing everybody reeling-off French, and being as old and 
at home in their world as my mother in hers. 

“At Seshike’s, too, there was clatter and dance enough, com¬ 
plicated here with some drunkenness and a mood of moral 
laxity, to the accompaniment of that beat, beat, of the drum’s 
monotony, which, day or night, will not cease till the body 
is buried—this to scare away her ‘spirit,’ which is considered 
to be envious of, and unfriendly to, the living: and here it 
is that advanced Europeans are perhaps most in advance of the 
savage, he, like the ancients and our Puritan parents, living in 
apprehension of the cosmos—a very genuine jumpiness, and 
no fun—while we others have attained to serenity in the face 
of sun and thunder, death and hell and volcano—or, when we 
fear, it is another species of fear. Later we may be free of 
fear, and only love. But this sound of drums is of the essence 
of this town—everywhere, at every hour, one hears it going 
on somewhere, dumbly remote or booming near, like the beat 
of the bosom of the community. 

“On arriving at Seshike’s, I found, to my surprise, Sueela 
there, ‘scattering roses with the throng’; but very soon after I 


112 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

came she ceased to share in the revel, and became subdued; 
Seshike, meantime, who was tipsy, celebrating my coming with 
endless fuss and gesture, I having to pretend to drink mead, 
and to touch the left shoulder of the dead, who lay within the 
hut with a ring of ashes on her brow, drink at her hand, an 
oval of candles about her, and three women who clapped their 
palms, and now and again gave vent to ululations, with their 
hands clasped on their heads. 

“Then I sat on a stool before the hut, on the other side of 
the door being Sueela seated; beside the hut beat the drum; 
and before it two flutes tooting to perhaps thirty persons 
lewdly dancing and making merry. 

“What made me stay was an inquisitiveness to see whether 
Sueela left ‘about eleven,’ the hour, as Macray had alleged, of 
her rendezvous with him. 

“She, meantime, every few minutes was approached by Se¬ 
shike and others with flourishes of courtesy, was reproached 
for being sad, and was pressed to partake of palm-toddy, of 
ground-nuts fried in cream, of masuka fruit in honey. She 
would not, however; and every time I glanced at her I caught 
the corner of her eye on me; so at last I said to her: ‘You 
are Sueela. I take it that you know me.’ 

“Her answer was: ‘Me not see you close before. You 
something like Spiciewegiehotiu!’ 

“With her eyebrows on high, the girl’s eyes widely ogle, and 
she spreads her unanimous ten fingers like duck’s toes, with a 
certain shrinking of awe, mock-babyish, as who should say: 
‘Oh-h-h my!’ But her extraordinary eyes have many expres¬ 
sions. 

“ 7 like the Queen?’ said I. ‘Really? Not so pretty!’ 

“ ‘Oh, well,’ says she, ‘men are ugly things.’ 

“‘Don’t like them? Not at all?’ 

“She cut an eye of disdain, shrugging, and then she shrugged 
again, and shrugged again, seized in a disease of shrugging. 

“I then asked her why she was there, to which she answered 
that the dead was her cousin; and I asked her why she was 


DZINIKULU MOVES 113 

quiet, to which she answered: ‘Me not know. Girls such silly 
things.’ 

“ ‘In what sense, though?’ I asked her. 

“ ‘They not know their own mind,’ she informed me. ‘They 
want, and they not want. Then they want something else. 
They toss in their sleep, they scratch themselves. The tsetse- 
fly sting them’—a piece of natural history so indefinite, that I 
fled from my mental indeterminateness to the irrelevant ques¬ 
tion: ‘What are there tsetse in Wo-Ngwanya?’ to which she 
answered yes, at one spot in ‘The North.’ 

“I next said to her: ‘Well, you had better come home now 
with me’—for I wished to shield her from any mischief into 
which she might put her foot with that absurd Macray; but she 
glanced sharply at me, asking: ‘Why “better”?’ and I under¬ 
stood that my phrase had scared her into a suspicion that 
Macray may have revealed to me something of her intrigue, so, 
in honour, I merely answered that it seemed late for a young 
girl to be alone so far from home. But her stillness and the 
reverie of her lowered lids showed that she was still suspicious. 

“When I presently asked her if we should set out, she looked 
down, evidently meditating, at her beautiful fingers, like the 
fingers of the Venus dei Medici, but bigger; but then answered: 
‘Me have to go first to my mother’s’—and this I understood to 
be an untruth. 

“She then asked me: ‘You see Spiciewegiehotiu tomorrow, 
no?’ and, on my answering ‘yes,’ she asked: ‘You done want¬ 
ing to carry her off?’ 

“ ‘Not done wanting,’ I ( replied, ‘but done attempting, I 
think.’ 

“ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘then we all be friends.’ 

“ ‘We, who?’ 

“ ‘You and me,’ she said in a low tone—I don’t know why 
she said it so low! 

“ ‘That will be charming,’ I answered, rather too low, per¬ 
haps. 

“I then saw her glance at the moon, and soon afterwards, 


114 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

suddenly rising, she said: ‘We meet again: me must go 
see . . and was gone behind the hut. ‘See’ what, Sueela? 
You did not say. . . . 

“I peered round the other side of the hut, and spied her feet 
fleeing through the back grounds, saw her pause to pry about, 
reconnoitring for spies, then saw her dart off with balancing 
palms across a narrow board over a brook that flows through 
the bush, and vanish. 

“But some moments afterwards I saw a shadow dash over 
the grass, gathered that she was being tracked, and ran to 
catch and warn her. But when I came to the stockade of the 
grounds, she had already scaled it, for, looking over, I saw her 
running along an alley toward Mustapha, her stallion, which 
was being held by a lad, and neighed as she came. 

“Even as she reached him the horse was off, she vaulting 
upon him as lightly as a girl steps upon her bicycle and glides 
away; and, as I heard his gallop die away into silence, I saw 
a young man, all but naked, scale the stockade twenty yards 
from me, and pelt away after her.” 


XVI 


THE RENDEZVOUS 

D ZINIKULU was standing under the shadow of a mot- 
suri, a gloomy tree like cypress, in a field of dourrha 
at the northeast corner of that water which lies under 
“The Elephant,” and he was eyeing a stretch of sugar-cane 
eighty yards north of him, when up there started to him out of 
the dourrha a snake panting with news: “She just gone into 
the canes. Sir Caray waited for her by the bamboo. She tie 
Mustapha to it. They in the canes.” 

This was hardly said when another herald started up to pant 
the same news; and soon afterwards another. 

Dzinikulu said to them: “Run back now. Watch all round 
the canes till she come out: then wait till she and Sir Caray 
separate, then tell her me waiting here to see her, and she 
better come.” 

They ran variously away; and after waiting half an hour, 
Dzinikulu at last grunted: “Eheh, she come.” 

Pelting Sueela came, paled, conscious of being all too late; 
scare and dismay in her! 

“See me here, Dzinikulu,” says she standoffishly, panting, 
with expanded nostrils: “me can’t stop—me very late—Spicie- 
wegiehotiu-” 

“Sueela, you love too much,” Dzinikulu remarked. 

“Who? Me? Oh, my mother, you got it wrong! Me 
meet Sir Caray to talk some politics—Spiciewegiehotiu tell me 
go—my mother tell me go. After the politics Sir Caray say 
‘Kiss me’; me say, ‘No, your top teeth come out.’ Me not like 
him; me—hate him.” 

She visibly shuddered, and Dzinikulu said: “Maybe you 
115 


116 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

hate him now, but you like him well enough just now, Sueela, 
when you follow him into the canes. No good saying no—six 
eyes see you. Suppose me tell Spiciewegiehotiu?” 

This struck her silent. His leer of guile, dwelling on her, 
could see her eyes dilated, her fingers stretched, her tail- 
looking form looking stretched in apprehension; till, lowering 
her lids, she just muttered: “You think me care?” 

Now he gripped her shoulder, speaking close and press- 
ingly: “No need to be frightened: nobody going to know. 
You and me friends from now—you in my power, me in yours 
—me to make you my headwife when me sit on my father’s 
throne—you to help me and Sir Cobby carry off Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu.” 

At which a fire of wrath and scorn shot from her eyes, but 
in so lightning a flash, that he did not see it; in the next mo¬ 
ment she was smiling a tiny smile of guile, with downcast eyes, 
asking: “When Sir Cobby carry her off?” 

“Me not know yet—me have plans—and me not fail, if you 
with us. So what you say? Me make your mother Chief 
Councillor—me make you Queen—hug you every day—make 
much of you.” 

“You getting o-o-old!” she answered, ogling, with stretched 
fingers, in her shrinking way. 

“Nonsense, not getting old: young man; wait and see.” 

“How me know you make me Queen?” 

He touched the ground with his palms, saying, “Me swear by 
‘The Elephant.’ ” 

“Swear you not let anybody know about me and Caray.” 

“Me swear that, too.” 

“By ‘The Elephant.’ ” 

“You swear first you not tell Spiciewegiehotiu what pass be¬ 
tween you and me.” 

“Me swear,” she said. 

“By The White Lamb Washed.” 

She had one moment’s hesitation; then, touching the ground, 
swore. 


THE RENDEZVOUS 


117 


“Now,” said she, “you swear about me and Caray.” 

On which he, touching the ground, swore by “The Elephant,” 
and did not see the slyness of her smile—sly in her knowledge 
that his intellect was much more servile to sanctities and oaths 
than was hers; that he, afraid to break, would keep, and she, 
afraid to break, would break. 

“So we friends now,” he said: “you with me and Sir Cobby: 
you say yes.” 

“You think me can decide so soon?” she asked. “To¬ 
morrow night, if me send you a basket of mawas, me say yes; 
if me not send, me say no. Now let me go—Oh, my mother, 
me late, late, this night. . . .” 

They waved arms, as away she went darting through 
the do'urrha, and presently to him, and to Macray, moving 
homeward, rang from afar the clatter of her stallion’s 
tramp. 

At full bat she galloped all up the awna, and, as she sprang 
from her horse, tossed her rein at a groom, immediately to start 
into running up the avenue toward the Queen’s hut. 

But the closer she approached it, the slower she moved— 
saw the opening closed; and only after several minutes of hesi¬ 
tation did she timidly rap. 

There was no answer; and there now she stood in misery, 
suspended, wringing her palms, heaving the appeal of her eyes 
to the skies, breathing: “Oh, my mother, what a fool, what 
a fool, live in me!” All was still but that beating in her 
bosom, and the breeze’s innumerable footstep trooping through 
the trees; and presently, still more timorously, she rapped 
afresh. But no answer: and after waiting through minute 
added to minute on the sharp edge and tiptoe of suspense, now 
she clasps her head distractedly, staring, saying: “My 
mother! this is Caray this night! no more Caray! me done, 
done, done with boys and men!” And now, crouching, her 
mouth at the round of door, she calls: “Oh, let me in, dear! 
Me love you.” 

No response followed at once, but some minutes afterwards 


118 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

there was movement within, the bar of the door was removed, 
the Queen appeared, stooped outward to look at the moon’s 
position, and went back to sit on her bed, while Sueela, enter¬ 
ing, stood near the doorway. 

Nothing was said—Spiciewegiehotiu seated with her finger- 
joints at her cheek, looking judicial. But after some time she 
quietly asked: “Where you been?” 

“You know me been to my cousin’s wake.” 

“You straight from there now?” 

“No. Me meet Prince Dzinikulu. He and me talk to¬ 
gether. Me have things to tell you.” 

“You seen Caray tonight?” 

“Me? No.” 

“Not laid eyes on him?” 

“Caray? No.” 

“Swear.” 

“My goodness! me—swear.” 

Spiciewegiehotiu sprang sharply up, caught up a nut-candle, 
and went to hold it close to the culprit’s face. 

“What scratch your face like that? One, two, three— 
You been in the canes, girl?” 

“Oh, my mother, which canes? Me? Oh, don’t think such 
things of me, dear.” Sueela’s voice of reproach broke, she 
covered her face, shed a tear. 

“Well, then, tell me —what scratch your face?” 

“Maybe it was that long-grass in Seshike’s grounds. Me was 
sitting in the grass-” 

“Lie. If you lie to me, me kill you!” Up went her palm 
to slap, while the culprit buried away her face, presenting the 
elbow to whatever might come. 

“Now the truth!” 

“Haven’t me told you? Think as you like now. You only 
jealous, my girl.” 

“What me have to be jealous for? You been with a man?” 

“Yes, that’s it—think so, if you like!” 


]19 


THE RENDEZVOUS 

“They say you bad! They say you’re a strumpet! Are 
you? Tell me!” She stamped. 

“Yes, me bad, me black—anything you like, my girl!” 

“Trollop! They say Spiciewegiehotiu’s friendship not 
enough for you! They say you want man! Is that what you 
are? Answer!” 

Sueela laughed out from under her elbow. “You only 
jealous! But that is foolishness. You think you love me 
more than me love you, Spiciewegiehotiu? You think so? 
Maybe me show you some day”—words which Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu afterwards recalled, and ever remembered. 

She turned away, and presently in a changed voice asked: 
“You not even seen Caray?” 

“Me tell you no,” sullenly the other muttered. 

Spiciewegiehotiu drew her forefinger across her throat, say¬ 
ing: “Good thing for Caray. Me cut his head short off, if 
he touch you.” 

Some moments more, and she said appealingly to Sueela: 
“You sure, dear?” 

The other muttered something, and Spiciewegiehotiu now 
said: “People believe what they want to believe; maybe that’s 
why me believe you: but that not make it true. Next time me 
see you and Caray together, me know with one glance what’s 
what between you and him. If you not see him, what make 
you so late—long after midnight?” 

“Me tell you me meet Prince Dzinikulu!” 

Pause. 

“Come on, kiss me.” 

And, ogling, with outspread fingers, Sueela stepped stately; 
and cheek rubbed cheek. 

“Who my friend?” asked Spiciewegiehotiu, asmile. 

“You tell me first who love you?” 

“You love me. Now you tell me who my friend.” 

“You know.” And cheek rubbed cheek. 

Then Sueela dropped upon her rugs, and sighed, while the 



120 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Queen paced silent, wrapped in herself, with rather pressing 
steps. 

“Me see Sir Cobby at Seshike’s,” Sueela remarked presently, 
undoing her moocha. 

Spiciewegiehotiu halted one instant, then, without saying 
anything, continued to pace. 

And presently again Sueela: “What you thinking of now? 
You not curious to hear about me and Dzinikulu?” 

“Tell me,” the Queen muttered, pacing still. 

“Dzinikulu in with Cobby. Me say to Cobby at Seshike’s, 
‘you done trying to carry off the Queen?’ Cobby answer ‘yes.’ 
But that not true: for Dzinikulu offer tonight to make me his 
queen, if me help him and Cobby-” 

Now Spiciewegiehotiu halted. And at once her intellect 
seized, not upon what, to Sueela, was the main point—Dzini- 
kulu’s treason—but upon a by-point very embarrassing for 
Sueela. “And how come Dzinikulu to believe that you would 
not tell me this?” 

“He make me swaaare not to tell: so he think me not tell!” 

“How he make you?” 

“My mother! it was in a dark alley—he and three men— 
they drag me off Mustapha—and Dzinikulu say, if me not 
swear, they hatch up a tale that they catch me with a boy. 
So me swooore!” 

“What you swear by?” 

“By—‘The Elephant.’ ” 

The royal toe tapped the ground. “You lying. You think 
me not know when you lying?” Then with tenderness: “Oh, 
why you lie to me, dear?” 

On which Sueela, leaning forward, her face beaming affec¬ 
tion, cried out in a distress of conscience: “Me love you!” 

“You think me not know that? But you lying somewhere. 
Me think you meet Caray, Dzinikulu see you, and so could 
make you swear; nor he wouldn’t make you swear by ‘The Ele¬ 
phant,’ he make you swear by The White Lamb Washed: and 
now you break an oath that you swore by me,” 


THE RENDEZVOUS 


121 


“My mother!” breathed Sueela, staring at her. 

“Tell me now if that was it,” said the Queen. 

Sueela covered her face, shaking her head, crying out in dis¬ 
tress: “Me tell you no! Me not see any Caray this night! 
Me wish Caray was dead!” 

At which the Queen smiled, saying: “Never mind; maybe 
he die. As for Dzinikulu”—she paced again—“he tired of 
life, that man, he want to die: he must wait till me see my 
way to give him what he want. But me think he lie about 
Cobby: if Cobby tell you he done trying, he done. Me know 
Cobby.” 

Sueela looked at her with a perplexed speculation! “How 
you know Cobby? You only speak six words with him one 
night! ” 

No answer was made; the Queen paced afresh, wrapped in 
her cogitations. And presently Sueela: “When you going to 
marry Sandelikatze?” 

“Never.” 

“Me thought not. So what changed you so sudden?” 

Spiciewegiehotiu laughed to herself. “That was foolish¬ 
ness! Oh, that was! Me only said it to please you and Man- 
daganya. Everybody laugh! You think the people stand 
such a thing?” 

“You not care about that when you want anything!” 

“Yes, me care. And me not want this.” 

“So when you going to get married and know what a 
man is?” 

“In six months.” 

“Who you going to marry?” 

“A king.” 

“Which king?” 

“Some king”—she shrugged. 

“You not tell me everything you think about in your head!” 

“What you mean?” 

“Nothing.” 

Spiciewegiehotiu paced on. 


122 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

And presently again Sueela: “Cobby something like you.” 

“Like me?” 

“Eheh. Me see him close tonight. He very pretty.” 

“You think so?” 

“Eheh. You not think so?” 

“He know a lot of things: me know that.” 

“But nobody understand why you not kill Cobby! why you 
let him free, and have him here in the sigodhlo!” 

“Oh, you too foolish. You not see all those things in Cob¬ 
by’s waggons? Me could not even guess what they good 
for. Cobby will tell me.” 

“How you know he tell you?” 

“Me know. Some of them useful, maybe, like guns. It 
appears that white man know a lot. Already Cobby teach the 
blacksmiths how to make a rod thicker in the middle than at 
the ends. Cobby do us good—help in war. Me going to 
fight.” 

“Oh, my mother. Who you going to fight with now?” 

“Me not sure yet. Maybe with Sebingwe, but me think 
with Daisy. Me pick a quarrel with Daisy.” 

“Poor Daisy. When?” 

“Soon. This month.” 

“But what you want more war for already? . . . Me think 
me know, though.” 

“What me want it for?” 

“Me think me knooow!” 

“Foolish thing. War good. Only, so many wives to one 
man!—that what spoil it. Listen: me tell you now something 
me been thinking. Suppose me make a law—one man, one 
wife, no more. Then suppose me make war: three thousand 
boys fall in battle. So now three thousand girls will get no 
boy. But which three thousand? If a boy can only have one 
wife, he going to choose the prettiest, strongest, cleverest girl 
his lohola can buy. So three thousand of the least strong and 
clever girls will go childless. Then the average of the next 
generation will be so much stronger and cleverer: and in 


THE RENDEZVOUS 123 

fifty years, with one wife, and a lot of war, the Wa-Ngwanya 
will become a nation of kings and queens.” 

Sueela meditated on it. “Me see,” she said: “your eylosah 
(attendant spirit) always speaking things in your ear. But 
you think the people stand that law? My mother! one wife? 
And who to hoe the man’s fields, and weave his mantles? A 
man not like to pat every night on the same old pair of 
paps!” 

“How you, know what man like? Let the man hoe his own 
fields!—why not? Wo-Ngwanya man too lazy. You wait: 
me going to do it—when me see my way. If they say no, me 
say yes.” 

“Isn’t that what me said just now? When you want any¬ 
thing, you not care what they say.” 

“Yes, me care, if me not strong enough; if me strong 
enough, me not care.” 

“And what going to make you strong enough?” 

Spiciewegiehotiu tossed out her arm. “Victory! Victory 
on top of victory. The conqueror can do what he like.” 

“Poor Daisy!” went Sueela, ogling with spread fingers, “and 
poor Sandelikatze! Then when you feel yourself strong 
enough to force the people to stand a white king, you make 
somebody king! And everybody to have only one wife, be¬ 
cause he to have only one.” 

“Oh, you fool,” muttered Spiciewegiehotiu, standing still, 
with an underlook. 

“You think me not see into you? You say that they say me 
want man: you want man, too; and you going to kill thousands 
of men to get one man.” 

Spiciewegiehotiu stood a minute looking at her, then on a 
sudden remarked: “Look here, me not answer you, you too 
foolish*”; and paced anew. 

And presently Sueela yawned vast, complaining: “Me 
3leepy!” 

“Yes, poor thing,” said Spiciewegiehotiu, “go to sleep, you 
done up, Caray wear you out.” 


124 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


“Eheh, white man rough,” answered Sueela, stretching— 
“think as you like, my girl! ” 

In another minute she was felled and slept, the Queen still 
pacing until the lights went out, the moon went out, then, lying, 
put out her hand, drew and took her companion’s, and so slept, 
and dreamt. 


XVII 


IN THE BAOBAB 

T HE following afternoon Cobby presented himself at the 
royal entrance, nicely belted and combed, bringing a 
little looking-glass and a half-pound packet of sugar, 
to gain the good graces of the sovereign. 

He was at once admitted, after depositing knife and revolver, 
according to etiquette, passed up the avenue, and, though his 
hands were clammy, to convince himself that he was not flut¬ 
tered, paused to note that the avenue-statues were Egyptian in 
type; then on to the royal hut; but now heard to his right a 
voice that called out: “Me here.” 

On each side of the hut-door stood a baobab, and in the 
hollow of the one to the right, large as a hall in which forty 
people may sleep, he found the Queen seated, all among cush¬ 
ions and leopard-skins, in yellow, blackened with elephants, 
and in the black of her hair yellow flowers of ngotuane, a 
parrot on her lap, a stool before her. 

Profoundly Cobby bowed, while she, cocking up an eye side¬ 
ward at him, asked: “What you want?” 

“First,” answered Cobby formally, “to thank you for the 
favours I have of your hand; secondly, to present to you as a 
petty return, these little things; thirdly, to intercede with you 
for my man, Panda, still interned in ‘The Elephant’; and 
lastly to announce the early departure of me and my men 
from your hospitable and charming country.” 

He then presented the things, and she regarded herself in the 
glass, meditating very gravely upon what she beheld there. 
“Eheh, this good,” she muttered. And she asked him: “This 
made of tin—or of silver?” 


125 


126 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


“Of neither,” he answered: “quicksilver is the English for it 
—a liquid metal. This is spread on glass , which is made by 
melting sand in the presence of soda and lime, and permits 
light to pass through it.” 

“Permits light,” she repeated musingly. . . . “Yes, but what 
light is? You can’t see it, you can’t touch it”—a question at 
which Cobby stood surprised, highly admiring the mind that 
so enquired. 

“No,” he answered—“can’t see it: light is a force, and force 
is invisible. You must understand that the space between the 
sun and us is not empty, but is filled with a substance, which 
the force of the sun sets all atremble in waves or rays, like a 
pool when a stone is thrown in. Some of which rays are 
light-rays: and these, striking on the myriad bits of your face, 
fly off to the glass , fly through to the shiny metal behind, and 
fly off that through the glass again to strike into your eye: then 
you see as one whole the myriad bits of that face of yours.” 

He smiled, but grave, grave, was she, her finger-joints at 
her cheek, the image of meditation. Silence. Then she asked: 
“And what that round thing is that you sent me?” on 
which he explained what a clock is, making her still graver. 
Then suddenly she looked down at the packet of sugar, ask¬ 
ing: “What this is?” 

“Taste it,” said he. 

She put some on her tongue. 

“Eheh,” she muttered with a nod: “it good.” 

“That in English is called shoo-gak: not so nice as honey 
but preferable, because it can be procured in far greater quan¬ 
tity—from cane.” 

“Cane? How from cane?” 

“The cane-juice is crushed out by a machine, then is boiled 
in large basins of copper; when it cools it is shoo-gah .” 

“Machine? How you get the machine?” 

“Oh, that is easily made.” And, imprudently, he added: 
“If I was going to stay longer, I should show your people how 
to make the machine, and how to cast the basins.” 


IN THE BAOBAB 127 

All meditation was she, and suddenly, after a silence, she 
muttered: “Sit down.” 

On which he sat on the stool, drawing it aside, for the light 
in there was subdued, the doorway into the tree-trunk not being 
wide. And now a kodak in his hand clicked. 

“What that is?” she asked. 

“A thing that makes a picture of anything in the twinkling 
of an eye—or any number of pictures. The picture which it 
has just made of you I will send you tomorrow.” 

Her quick eyes reflected. “A picture like this?”—pressing 
open a locket hung about her neck, she held it toward him, 
adding: “A picture of my father.” 

But Cobby said with surprise: “There is no picture!” 

And now she glanced at the locket—the photograph was 
gone. 

Her astonishment gave place to a paleness—of anger. 

After a little she muttered: “Caray steal it!” 

“Macray? No, there you are wrong, I assure you,” Cobby 
said: “such pictures are quite common and cheap among white 
men: Macray would never dream of stealing one.” 

“Caray steal it,” she repeated, speaking rather to herself. 
“Me show it to him one night—he ask me to. Since then me 
not open the locket. He steal it. Maybe he tired of life. 
Or—why he steal it?” 

Cobby, apprehensive now for Macray’s safety, earnestly an¬ 
swered : “Oh, take my word, he never did! ” 

“Maybe me know Caray better than you know him.” She 
smiled a little, scratching the parrot’s head. “Tell me now 
about why you come, and why you bring Caray.” 

He leaned keenly to tell her. “It was for your own sake 
that I came to take you away, because in Europe you would be 
a far greater queen than here—with fewer subjects indeed, but 
far more skilled, and slaving for your pleasures far harder 
than any Mo-Ngwanya ever thinks of labouring for his own 
pleasures; indeed some one who is enjoying the wealth which 
is yours by law is at this moment a more powerful sort of mon- 


128 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

arch in Europe than you are here, or than monarchs are there; 
and I, being your cousin, and your natural guardian-” 

In a grave, low voice she mentioned: “Me your guardian, 
Cobby, not you mine”; at which Cobby flushed, and shut up. 

“How you come to be my cousin?” she demanded. 

“Son of your mother’s sister. We two have the same blood 
and heart-beat. Does something in you not know it?” 

To this she made no answer, nor looked at the light in his 
eyes: but presently asked: “What the name of that some one 
is who enjoy this wealth which is mine by law?” 

“He, too, is your cousin: his name is Douglas Macray.” 

Now she started. “Same name as Caray?” 

“Yes—just a chance. Your name, too, is Macray: Flora 
Macray: ‘Flora’ meaning goddess of flowers—queen of all 
the roses and lilies—queen of girls and of queens. . . 

He had her ear, but not her eyes, which were turned aside 
from him. She presently asked: “You know this cousin of 

• O 

miner 

“I never chanced to meet him—no.” 

“What Caray’s other names?” she next asked. 

“Just Douglas Macray, I think.” 

“Short . . . ! And what the names of the other Douglas 
Macray?” 

“Just Douglas Macray, I fancy. We have short names in 
Europe, except among some aristocrat families, whose children 
have strings of names like Africans, their whole tone being 
rather African.” 

“Me think me see something,” she muttered. “And what 
make you bring Caray with you?” 

“I wanted a white man, and he offered himself.” 

“So. Me see. That why he steal my father’s picture. But 
how you know me was here in Wo-Ngwanya?” 

“Do you remember a man named Rolls? He told me of 
you, and come with me nearly to Wo-Ngwanya; but, sent with 
Macray in advance over the mountains, Rolls was killed by a 
lion.” 



IN THE BAOBAB 


129 


“Caray kill him,” she muttered at once to herself. 

She then asked: “And it very far that country you come 
from?” and when he answered: “Thousands on thousands of 
miles,” musingly she said: “The world broad—na! and so 
many sorts of men and of beasts it breed and feed. Under the 
sunrise men and women busy living, and under the sunset. 
Some not eat python-meat, some not circumcised, some file 
their teeth away, some knock out their top teeth to be like 
oxen, some drop upon their back and waggle their legs to¬ 
gether to say ‘how-d’you-do.’ Babisa traders come to me 
every year from Mozambique, Arabs from Zanzibar, and Pom- 
beiros from where the sea beat that beach which is nearest to 
the sun’s going down: there Portuguese spend their days. 
They all different, and think different thoughts. Some bring 
calico, some cowrie-shells, horses, guns, seeds; we give them 
indigo, ivory of elephant and hippopotamus tusks, oil, dust of 
dalama (gold), which women wash from river-sands, with 
agates and garnets out of gneiss-rock. Me want more trade— 
far more: that will he part of your work, to make us large like 
the world, liberal and rich like the world. The world so rich, 
so strange! If a brook flow, it flow with music; if a breeze 
blow, it feel sweet, it blow with music; if the moon droop 
down, it droop in beauty. One evening me hear a little stream 
whisper so sweet, something seem to say to me: ‘Me-and-you: 
can the seven North-stars alter their form? maybe they alter 
some day: but you in me for ever.’ But all not good: corpses 
smell bad; old lions get toothache; old men get wrinkles. 
They say love tweaking sweet: but, if the girl get a child, it 
hurt her, unless she under fourteen. She not do any harm, 
perhaps; yet she rue, pangs trap her. Then she have joy 
again: the child smell good; she love it. But now and again it 
smell bad: she not love it for a minute; then it smell good 
again, she pardon and love it again, she gallop it between her 
palms, she laugh. So the world is. On the whole, it good.” 

“Oh, yes,” said Cobby: “that is proved by the continued 
existence of the human race: for anon it is, on the whole, bad 


130 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

for an individual, and then the individual at once kills himself. 
Whether it ever is, on the whole, bad for any lower animal I 
don’t know; if ever it is, and the animal has no means of es¬ 
cape by suicide, then a deep wrong is in the world.” 

“Yes,” she answered, “but it not argue with anybody— 
dumb! no tongue but the wind dumb, the sea mumbling, the 
thunder bumping. If you bless it, it answer, it babble ‘yes, 
me-and-you,’ but, if you blame it, it not care what you say, 
it go on rolling in its glories. When it want to rain, it rain: 
if you say ‘damn the rain,’ it wet you the same, no less, n 6 
more; when it not want it not rain, the rain-makers cannot 
make it. What kind of thing it all is? What kind of thing 
make it? White man know?” She peered suddenly into his 
face. 

“No, of course,” Cobby answered: “only what you, and 
jackals, and archangels know—that there is Eternal Power, 
which shows some of its workings to our senses. To Power we 
English give the names ‘Energy,’ ‘God,’ ‘Force’; but these are 
mere names for convenience; what kind of being Force or 
Power is no life can ever divine: for when by God’s help we 
wink, or plough, or pick a flower, using Power, we have no 
notion how we do it—it is boundlessly too profound for us, 
in trillions of eras no living thing can ever come near to dream¬ 
ing, for God is past finding out. We know something about 
Power, however—know that it is very powerful: it may be 
powerful without end; and we know that it is most adorable— 
our gaze can hardly bear the glory of the hem of the garments 
of the sun. Moreover, white men now have reason to believe 
that in time Power will be wholly good. You must understand 
that the bad smell of corpses, wrinkles, and so on, is very likely 
just a temporary state of things: for the high types of life, 
like lions and men, have not been long on the earth —men but 
for the twinkling of an eye, so to say—and are not yet adapted 
to the earth. Already men are so adapted, that they have got 
to like the smell of flowers, which dogs seem to dislike. In 
Europe pain in child-birth is abolished by a vapour which 


IN THE BAOBAB 


131 


mothers inhale; so with toothache; wrinkles can be prevented 
by facial exercises, or cured by a simple operation of the knife. 
In Europe the principal cause of sorrow is now not wrinkles 
nor toothache, but poverty; but already our priests, or ‘scien¬ 
tists,’ as priests are called there, have proved that the cause 
of poverty is the fact that certain persons are considered by 
Governments to ‘own’ the countries of nations, out of which 
wealth comes: so our poverty may now soon be abolished. 
And so on. And this process of adaptation to the earth will 
no doubt work on interminably, for the earth is a bird of 
Eternity. You say that you hear that already love is very, very 
sweet: well, yes; and it will become ever more and more sweet 
—tweaking sweet, you said, like an eel twitching, and each 
instant of life twitching sweet, when the host of Life shall ar¬ 
rive at home, and God shall have wiped all tears from the eyes 
of Life.” 

Leaning keenly toward her, he was looking at her with eyes 
which seemed to yearn to eat her, while she, like the ostrich, 
kept her eyes averted from that menace of being eaten; till, 
chancing to catch sight of a moisture of piety in his eyes, she 
looked kindly at him, their eyes met, and she then said: “You 
know a lot of things. You will tell me: and what all those 
things in your waggons good for.” 

“Very good,” he answered; adding: “Let it be soon.” 

“Why soon?” she wished to know: “that true that you want 
to go from me?” 

“Oh, not from —with you,” he said. “But, anyway, I must 

go-” 

“Why?” 

“Well—but—I cannot spend my life in Wo-Ngwanya; have 
work to do; I being a priest in my country—priest meaning 
* elder, 9 one who knows more than children, our priests (the 
real ones) devoting their lives to finding out new truths about 
the workings of Eternal Power. So I have to go to do this.” 

At which she smiled faintly, saying: “Yes, you know more 
than children; but you something like a child, Cobby.” 


132 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“In what way?” he sharply asked. 

“You soon see. You would not go, if you could.” 

Words at which Cobby turned very pale, and half rose, 
crying out: “And could I not, if I would?” 

With a forehead of rock, not looking at him, she answered: 
“What you expect? You come to take me; me take you.” 

“My God ” he breathed in English. 

“Yes, ‘my God,’ ” she grimly said in English. 

Red rushed impetuously up his face. “Oh, this is tyranny, 
Flora Macray!” 

“My name is Spiciewegiehotiu,” she mentioned with a flush. 

“Is it not tyranny?” 

“Of course. Me a tyrant.” 

“Yes, over your own people! but I am the free subject of an¬ 
other sovereign-” 

“Ah! me laugh at the other sovereign. Let him come and 
fetch you, me chuck his chitterlings to the choughs. You 
have only one sovereign, Cobby.” 

“I am yours!” he cried aloud in a heat of imperiousness. 

“What! You talk to me like that?” she called with a 
shrewish tongue, stooping forward to stare into his face. 

And back he stared at her. “Yes, I talk to you like that. 
Now, what will you do? Bite off my head?” 

She reflected on this, her eyelids dropped, and quietly she 
said: “Me not take off heads with my teeth, Cobby; and yours 
too big and red, and know too much, it give me belly-ache if 
me swallow it. But you not mean it! You not want to go! 
Cobby want to be priest to me. So stay—me treat you well 
—make you a great man when me see my way, you teaching us 
to make shoo-gah and other things, and helping us fight. Me 
just going to fight Daisy, and me want you to train a regiment 
of sharpshooters in rifle-firing, and be their captain. Our 
rifles not very good, but every day now we expecting a caravan 
of Arabs, and me have five hundred tusks of ivory to buy 
rifles: me and you stun Daisy deaf and dumb with sudden 
thunder.” 



IN THE BAOBAB 


133 


But Cobby was not won. “I don’t want to stun Daisy,” he 
said: “I was led to consider myself set free, and now I find 
myself still a prisoner. I cannot stand it! I am free, free, 
free, and your master! By heaven, if you treat me with in¬ 
dignity, I shall manage somehow to throw off this ignominy of 
soul that has me in the gutter. You say I don’t want to go, 
and unfortunately—unfortunately!—that is somewhat so—I 
am become your little dog, pitiably grovelling and sneaking to 
see your feet go by ... I like the walk, so rich in energy, in 
freedom and intolerance—the hips swing, the shoulders swing 

in counter-tune and antiphony—sister dear- But no, I 

won’t stand it!—I’d rather die—I divine the hardness and art¬ 
fulness of your heart, and / am quite the wrong— Why , 
may I ask, is this war with Daisy to take place?” 

He was now standing, and she, cocking her eye upward at 
him quietly replied: “Me have reasons, Cobby!” 

“Well, I wait: tell me the reasons.” 

She smiled. “No; if me tell you, you think too much of 
yourself.” 

But he, not divining that part of her war-aims was to advance 
him in the State, misunderstood her meaning, and answered: 
“You see, you treat me with indignity. That will make a white 
priest vain to be admitted into the counsels of a negro Queen! 
But do you imagine for a moment that I would take part in the 
slaughter of many men without so much as knowing the right 
and wrong of the quarrel?” 

Still she smiled. “There is no ‘quarrel’; the quarrel com¬ 
ing; then me fight.” 

“Meaning that you will make the quarrel?” he cried out: 
“do you mean to say that a girl—so young—so fair—can bear 
to wash her hands in the blood of thousands-?” 

Her forehead puzzled at him. “Men grow like grass,” she 
remarked: “if you kill two, soon four spring in their place, 
and, if they have a ruler with eyes, the new ones better than the 
old.” 

Now, this truth was all in tune with his own mental habit. 


134 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


though all contrary to his moral habit, and at the contradiction 
in himself , he stood still more hot and cross with her simple 
vision. 

“Grow like grass? Yes! True! But for a young girl— 
you will be a dear mother some day—you will rock a babe 
in your dear arms-” 

“Well, maybe, why not? When it smell good, me rock it.” 

“Oh, fie—cynical. But there will be no rifle-firing, under¬ 
stand, by my training-” 

“Oh, Cobby,” she muttered with reproach, “you try my pa¬ 
tience.” 

“And you try mine!” 

At which she laughed, asking: “We always going to 
quarrel like this?” 

“Always! Always!—unless you do what I tell you.” 

“Cobby, listen: if you think you mine, you live happy; if 
you think me yours, you get into trouble.” 

“More threats! more indignity!” 

“Me not threatened you before! Sometimes you talk wild.” 
Now she smiled. “Me think Sir Cobby in love. A lion worry 
him.” 

“In love with whom?” he eagerly asked. 

She shrugged. “Maybe with Sueela.” 

“No, say it—you shall.” 

“Sueela,” she said, smiling up into his face. “Maybe some 
day, if you very good, me give you Sueela. Me going to marry 
her brother, Sandelikatze. Perhaps you heard.” 

“Ha! ha! ha! My sublime rival! My lily competitor!” 

“But suppose me like him! Nice firm boy.” 

“Ha! ha! ha!” 

Now she flung her face frankly to him. “Oh, Cobby, you 
mad in love—a forest on fire-” 

“And yon?” he whispered near: “you?” 

Askance she eyed him, up and down, and down and up, with 
supercilious inspection. 




IN THE BAOBAB 135 

“Well, now I am all surveyed,” he testily said: “what is my 
doom?” 

“You think me weak in the head?” she demanded. 

“No, I don’t think so-” 

“Cobby, a Queen know how to plan and work: if she not 
know, she not a Queen—she dirt” With endless disdain her 
lips curled. “You go where my finger point, give up all 
thought of going away, with me or without me, and maybe 
some day you wash in joy, your belly go ‘Oh’ for fulness of 
the food of the gods. If you not do what me tell you, me say 
you get into trouble, maybe you die. No, me not think you 
die; no, not that. But, if temptation come to you, and you 
plot with anybody against me, you get into trouble, you taste 
the rage of my jealousy. Meantime, till the rifles arrive, 
you have all you want; live happy; play with the girls like 
Caray-” 

“You are to understand,” Cobby haughtily interrupted, “that 
there is no resemblance between Macray and me, except in 
skin.” 

“You think me not know?” she muttered. “And, talking of 
Caray, me want you to tell Caray something from me: say me 
not want to kill him, because me see that he may be useful to 
me some day; and he can play with all the girls, say: but, if 
any Wa-Ngwanya girl ever shed a tear because of him, and me 
get to know, he finished, he done for. Let him know. Me 
give him plenty of goods to buy a wife or two, if he want wife. 
And now you and me have talked together: me give you snuff, 
and something to drink.” She clapped her palms. “Later 
we discuss more. When you want to see me, me let you. 
That please you?” 

This she said in a confidence at which Cobby groaned 
“sweet,” but then at once broke out: “But the whole interview 
is unsatisfactory!—and not one word about Panda! When, 
pray, is Panda to be set free?” 

She shook her head. “Never, Cobby.” 



136 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“What ! ... my God. . . .” 

“Or—yes—maybe some day, when me see my way. But not 
for a long time.” 

“But why? Why? The man has done nothing- Look 

here, I refuse to be free, I will go back to ‘The Ele¬ 
phant-’ ” 

“Cobby, you can’t, unless me send you. Think why me 
keep him prisoner—it is easy to see-” 

“No, I don’t see-” he span to see Sueela enter asmile, 

looking mockery under her eyes at him, bearing a vessel and 
three mugs, the vessel bound round with string to keep down 
a bung in it, which, when the strings were cut, rushed out, 
foam showering out of the vessel’s mouth. 

But Cobby crossly refused the proffered cup. “No, I 
won’t,” he protested: “I am very offended,”—whereat Sueela 
pulled a long face and goggles of mock-awe at the dreadful¬ 
ness of the etiquette, while the Queen, slinging a knee, looked 
keenly up into his face, saying: “Cobby, drink—me com¬ 
mand.” 

“Command away—it’s no good!” cried Cobby. 

She reflected on the situation; then held out her hand. 
“Cobby can kiss my hand.” 

And immediately he was at it, down on his knees like the 
Brahmin muttering prayer, pressing kisses on it here and there, 
on palm and back. 

“Now drink,” she suggested. 

And he stood up, grumbling, “Oh, well, I suppose-” and 

took the mug. 

And bows of ritual betwixt cup and lip were cut between 
the three drinkers. 

As to the drink, “Never,” Cobby wrote afterwards, “have I 
tasted anything half so nice—nor, indeed, conceived that any 
flavour can be so delightful, the best champagne being very 
far inferior to this spiritual thing. Cross and preoccupied as 
I was, I felt impelled to ask the name of it, and was told 
“sorrel drink.” I now have it in abundance, for the next morn- 




INTHEBAOBAB 137 

ing an area of jars came to me. She is rich and liberal; but 
she shall find that I am not to be petted and bought. . . 

No sooner had he drunk than he saw two gigantic body¬ 
guards at the tree-entrance, and the Queen said: “They con¬ 
duct you to the gate. Good health.” 

Half going, half lingering, he put out arms of appeal, plead¬ 
ing: “Will you have^pity upon Panda?” 

“Good health,” she repeated, bowing him out; and headlong 
he went. 

She then let herself lie on her face; and Sueela, looking 
down on her, presently remarked: “My goodness, he nearly 
eat your hand”; on which Spiciewegiehotiu’s shoulder sud¬ 
denly shuddered with chuckling, and she sat up, saying: “A 
miss is as good as a mile!” 

Sueela then wished to know: “What you tell him about 
Panda to make him so cross?” 

“Me tell him me keep the man in prison. What he can ex¬ 
pect? He think me let him have a servant of his own to help 
him carry me off, or escape without me? But he won’t want to 
run away and leave Panda behind, so that’s another reason why 
me keep his Panda in prison. His Caray would be in prison, 

too, only- Look here”—she showed the locket—“Caray 

steal the picture.” 

“My mother, why he steal it?” Sueela breathed, all in 
awe. 

“It appears now,” the Queen answered, “that the reason 
Caray not want Cobby to carry me to that country is that it 
is Caray himself has my father’s goods, so Caray not want me 
to go to get the goods from him, and he steal the picture, which 
would prove that me my father’s daughter. Eh eh, that is it.” 

“Well!” went Sueela, scandalized: “me kill the thief, if 
me was you.” 

“Not me,” said the Queen: “till the day Cobby forget his 
country, Caray one of my spies and bodyguards against Cobby 
and Dzinikulu.” 

“But a thief-! Me wouldn’t have believed. ... If you 


133 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

not want to cut off his head, circumcise the rascal! then he 
won’t be quite so cheeky.” 

The Queen eyed her coldly aside. “How you know he not 
circumcised already?” 

“My goodness! somebody tell me.” 

“Who tell you? Maybe the sorrel drink get into your head, 
and now the truth coming out.” 

“All right, keep on about that, my girl!” 

Spiciewegiehotiu, suddenly lost in a reverie, did not answer; 
and presently Sueela, musing: “Cobby pretty. My God, he 
very pretty.” 

The Queen said nothing, and presently again Sueela, mus¬ 
ing: “Me wonder if Cobby circumcised?” 

Now the Queen started out of reverie. “You better go and 
ask him! Maybe he give you a present you not soon forget.” 

Sueela shook her face slowly. “No, not Cobby. Cobby a 
god. But tell me all he say to you, and you say to him.” 

“Come, let us walk.” She sprang up, they passed out, and, 
with arms round waists, paced long the avenue’s moss in step, 
tall daughters of the gods together, walking with that length of 
ankle and lordly leg of Men, predominantly walking his planet 
at last. 


XVIII 


WAR-DRUMS 

I ^HE whole place is now transformed,” Cobby presently 
wrote: “ordinary industry is cast to the winds, almost 
I all work having become war-work, and something ex¬ 
tremely like fever seems to have seized upon all the people, 
equally on fire being the eyes of the lad of fifteen and the man 
of sixty, equally they dance and stare and wave their arms: 
I call it ‘the dancing-sickness 5 —all wheels in dance, a wicked 
and mad dancing, which means ‘Kill! Kill! 5 Every day 
dreadful kerry-battles take place in the square between regi¬ 
ment and regiment, with the Queen as spectator of cracked 
skulls, fractured bones, disablements and deaths, as in the 
actual battlefield; and from morning to night athletic exer¬ 
cises are the order of the day. This afternoon in the east of 
the town I found within one hour three different priests rous¬ 
ing crowds to frenzies of venom: Daisy was the enemy of Man! 
Daisy was the stink-cat, the man of sin, the ripper of women 
and children! At the name Daisy the lip spits. I saw two 
women quarrelling, and with a scorn which shrieked each 
hurled at the other the taunt of having some M’Niami blood, 
and being a dirty pro-Daisy. And in every direction the thud 
of drums dumbly thumping, thumping, and the tramp of 
marchers marching somewhither under some motive.” 

The trouble (as understood by Cobby and the public) was as 
follows:— 

Daisy had sent to Spiciewegiehotiu an embassy to request 
the hand of Sueela in marriage. 

Spiciewegiehotiu had replied: “Very good. How much 
for her?” 


139 


140 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Daisy had then replied: “Thirty head of cattle.” 

This was wanton; this was picking a quarrel; this was war. 
Daisy was out to waste Wo-Ngwanya. . . . 

Now, about this time Spiciewegiehotiu had bought largely in 
rifles from a caravan, and when the quarrel broke out she had 
summoned Cobby to lay the case of Daisy before him. 

On which Cobby, little suspicious as he was, had cried out: 
“It is hard to believe! You have as good as told me yourself 
that you meant to pick a quarrel with Daisy.” 

“Yes,” she had said, “but Daisy not give me time: he pick 
the quarrel—you see, no?” 

“Yes, I see—since you say so.” 

“So now you train the regiment, no? When we beat Daisy, 
everybody say you beat him, you bring luck.” 

“I don’t care at all what everybody will say,” he had an¬ 
swered, not fathoming her aims in respect of himself; on 
which she had shut up her lips with a resentful pressure. 

But in the end he had undertaken to captain the regiment, 
nor was it until afterwards that it began to be whispered that 
Daisy’s request for Sueela’s hand had not been spontaneous, 
but had been suggested to him by an agent of Spiciewegiehotiu, 
on the ground that that marriage would cement the friendly re¬ 
lations between Spiciewegiehotiu and Daisy; also that Daisy 
had really meant to offer, not thirty, but three thousand, cattle 
as lohola for Sueela, but that on the night of the arrival of the 
M’Niami embassy, who were lodged in the sigodhlo, a pair of 
Spiciewegiehotiu’s officers had given the embassy the diplo¬ 
matic hint that wealth was no object in this matter with the 
Queen, who had other objects; that the embassy would receive 
in the morning from the Queen a basket of peaches—let them 
offer just so many cattle as there were peaches in the basket, 
and this would please the Queen. The peaches had duly come, 
as foretold—thirty peaches; but when at the Queen’s council 
the same day the ambassadors had offered thirty cattle, Spicie¬ 
wegiehotiu in sorrowful majesty had turned her back upon 
them, and without a word walked out. 


141 


WAR-DRUMS 

And now much ado. The embassy had been sent back with¬ 
out an answer. Then ambassador after ambassador from 
Daisy, protesting that the three heads of the original embassy 
had been cut off for thus insulting Wo-Ngwanya, that he was 
willing to pay a double lobola. . . . But Spiciewegiehotiu’s 
wound was too profound for forgiveness or listening. How 
could she now trust Daisy? Let Daisy draw his sword: her 
sword was drawn. 

Thus fell out what the Wa-Ngwanya call “The Third 
M’Niami War”: and all the drums rumbled. 

Now, Cobby had a servant called Sansiwana who, while 
Cobby was eating a meal, often conversed with him; Sansi¬ 
wana had a niece married to a M’Niami man; and one fore¬ 
noon when Cobby came home from Black River, where he had 
set up bulls’-eyes for rifle-practice, he first heard from Sansi¬ 
wana the version of the quarrel as commonly understood 
among the M’Niami: on which his face flushed with indigna¬ 
tion at the consciousness that he had been gulled like Tom, 
Dick and Harry, and, instantly resolving to wash his hands of 
that war, he hurried away to see the Queen, at that hour at 
White River: and that way he went to intercept her. 

As he passed out of his gate, he found waiting there an 
army-officer, who, profoundly bowing, placed in his hand a 
little square of wood, and went away without saying anything. 
Cobby knew him as an officer of Dzinikulu’s brigade, and, on 
seeing an elephant, a boat, and the sun behind a hill, carved 
on the wood, he understood that Dzinikulu desired an interview 
with him at “The Elephant” after sunset. 

He then went on out of the town and through the very sylvan 
scene within which White River winds, of which he writes: 
“It is not the name only that is a poem, but the river itself, 
tearing lacerated along through rocks, transacting its odyssey 
in long hexameter lines of froth and song betwixt forested 
cliffs and fairylands of frondage, spray of lofty palmyra- 
leafage, light-green of date-palm, gloomy motsuri, festoons of 
orchilla-weed, homes of flamingos, black geese, parrots, here or 


142 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

there a hut peering through. Not all Wo-Ngwanya huts are 
round, some being oblong, built upon piles, looking within 
their secret places of greenery so at home and old in the uni¬ 
verse, that they produce a swooning sense of beauty and fitness 
which not all the buildings of Greece and Italy, placed there, 
could give: and I suddenly remember them, feeling that I 
have beheld them in sceneries of Heaven in the eras before I| 
left my home to tour the suns. 

“When I came to that spot where the river falls three feet 
in two falls between three rocks, I paused, taking my station 
under the shade of a mopane, the sun being pretty hot in spite 
of strong breeze. I could see no one, but, knowing that the 
bathing is under the two falls, I waited, till, after some min¬ 
utes, I saw Sueela come out of bush on the opposite shore, and 
make across the water, anon skipping the rocks, anon wetting 
the bottom of her Egyptian kilt. 

“All eyes and smiles she came, and when I stepped to meet 
her, says she: ‘Spiciewegiehotiu say What you want? She 
say Her hair wet, and she not want anybody to see her.” 

“I answered that I wanted to announce at once something in 
respect of the war, and was not thinking of her hair, which I 
should not look at at all. 

“ ‘Me tell her,’ says she, and back she walked through the 
forty yards of brawling water to vanish into bush. 

“Then again she emerged, again journeyed across, and, splut¬ 
tering sniggerings, says she: ‘Spiciewegiehotiu say You like 
giiirrrls! That why you come to see them bathe. But that 
very bad for you.’ 

“To this I answered: ‘Be good enough to tell that lady 
that there is no truth at all in this, since my only motive was 
to talk of the war.’ 

“So back she waded in formal embassy, a black Aphrodite 
through frothing white, and again presently in formal em¬ 
bassy wades back to say with spluttering of laughter: ‘Spicie¬ 
wegiehotiu say Your hair raaad!’ 

“‘Really? . . . But in what connection is this announce- 


143 


WAR-DRUMS 

ment made?’ I demanded. ‘Do you mean to say she sent 
you all this way just to tell me that? Tell her I say I knew. 
Tell her I say hers is black.’ 

“With bogey-eyes aside on me, she answered: ‘Black hair 
not hot like raaad!’ 

“‘Hot? . . . You’re a goose,’ I said: ‘you’re a black 
goose.’ But this is an English idiom, and, ‘Why me like a 
goose?’ she wished to know; to which I answered: ‘Because 
you spread out your fingers like a goose, and quack nonsense- 
announcements.’ 

“ ‘They good to eat, geese,’ she remarks, her eyes cast down. 

“ ‘Yes, and you, too,’ It absurdly said. ‘But ask that lady 
if I may see her.’ 

“ ‘Me tell her, and that her hair black’—and back she 
paced. 

“Then again she came, this time to say: ‘Spiciewegiehotiu 
say How long you going to keep her hiding in there? She 
say Go way, and she send for you when she want to talk 
about the war.’ 

“‘Well, I suppose I must obey,’ I said, ‘good-bye’; and in 
a habitual way I put out my hand, which she took with her 
face averted, and never was my hand pressed in such a 
spasm—she hurt me! I don’t understand why; then ran, as 
if chased. 

“I did not at the time suspect that all this about ‘hair’ 
and ‘girls bathing’ might be deliberate chicanery; but the 
suspicion has since visited me that what I was there to say 
may have been conjectured, and an interview with me shunned, 
that I might have no chance of saying it. 

“I went away, but not far, and from under a hut in jungle 
watched her go past with her enterprising gait within her 
circle of girls who giddily whispered together and giggled; 
then, returning to the falls and water-pool, I bathed there, 
wallowing with enjoyment in the warmth of the water in 
which she had washed, till I laughed at my nonsense, that 
water being then well on its way to the sea—a nonsense like 


144 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

the good Tennyson’s, ‘men may come, and men may go, but 
I go on for ever.’ ‘I’ what? Crude Victorian person, now— 
so muddle-headed, unsceptical, is the habit of the uneducated 
mind, unclarified and unhardened by the habit of science. 
Any individual drop of ‘the brook’ does not ‘go on for ever, 
but ‘comes and goes,’ exactly like the individual man, and 
the race, the brook, of men ‘goes on for ever,’ exactly like 
the brook of drops. So that we have contrast insisted upon 
where simile is complete. 

“Pressed to do something, to say my say, at four in the 
afternoon I called at the royal entrance, knowing that her 
review of the manoeuvres was then over: but I ‘could not’ be 
seen. She had promised to see me whenever I wished, and 
the suspicion visited me then that there is a motive for this 
invisibility, that I am being fooled, and used as a tool. But 
I will not be so used; I will not take part in a butchery on 
the unjust side. Until then I had been doubtful about going 
to meet Dzinikulu, but now decided to go; for if by any means 
I can get out of this imprisonment, this tutelage and servitude, 
and get her, not over me, but under me, as is right, I grasp 
those means. And they may be nearer than I have imagined. 
When, on passing after dark through the thronged awna and 
out to ‘The Elephant,’ I met Dzinikulu, he represented his 
plans as far advanced, and his hopes in bloom. Our dis¬ 
cussion was in a punt in the dense dark under ‘The Elephant,’ 
and I felt myself something of a conspirator, but see no other 
way out, except the impossible way of spending my existence 
in this place. Dzinikulu says he can depend upon half the 
elderly men in the army, and upon all his own officers; thinks 
the war our luck, since some chance is sure to present itself 
when the Queen takes the field; and advises me on no account 
to withdraw from captaining the rifles, since my presence at 
the front in a natural way is so desirable. I found that he, 
too, quite knows that Daisy is not the provoker, but the pro¬ 
voked; and I told him that, this being so, even if I go to the 
front with the rifles, nothing will induce me to captain them 


WAR-DRUMS 


145 


in battle. He also informed me, what I can hardly credit, 
that Sueela, too, is now on our side! he being in possession 
of some secret of hers, and she having sent him ‘a basket of 
mawas’ as pledge of her adherence: in spite of which he is 
chary of trusting her with the secret of any plan, unless it be 
necessary. 

“It was after ten when we parted, and, on coming home, 
I found awaiting me a visitor, my Macray, distinctly tipsy, 
but still inquisitive as to my movements, as to the nature of 
my interviews with ‘Spicey,’ as to why I was put to drill the 
riflemen when he is the better shot—as he said—and when 
last I had seen ‘his’ Sue, who, he says, is lately shunning him. 
‘You have no Sue,’ I told him, and then told him what the 
Queen had bid me tell as to his bringing calamity upon any 
Mo-Ngwanya girl, also of her notion that he had stolen the 
photograph, and I bid him beware; to which he answered: 
‘Let her beware—who is she? I am getting fed up with 
this—my cigars are giving out—and if there is no solution 
soon, I’ll force one’—I don’t know what he meant, if any¬ 
thing. He becomes insolent and intolerable; and soon I got 
rid of him. . . .” 


XIX 


BATTLE 


HE following morning Cobby again presented himself 
at the royal gate—surprised to find only one guards¬ 



man, who in turn was surprised at his request to see 


the Queen. “You not know the Queen gone?” he was asked; 
and discovered that she had left Eshowe at break of day. 

Feeling slighted and tricked, sore and bitter, he was off 
straightway to find Ngdeiho, the commander of the army, 
passing in the awna through a teeming scene of war-business, 
swarms of horses, of oxen lowing, parks of carts, brigades 
at bivouac, regiments at breakfast; for the last contingents 
of the northern and western army divisions had come in 
over-night; and, in passing through it all, he saw marching 
southward and outward two regiments, whose movement 
represented the initial flowing of the host toward the front. 

He was coldly received by Ngdeiho pacing in his park 
west of the awna, and when the announcement was made that 
Cobby, for his part, did not intend to captain his men in 
any actual battle, white teeth of all the warriors who sur¬ 
rounded the old general showed themselves in a sneer, the 
general himself languidly drawing his finger across his 
throat, hinting at danger there for some one. For the favours 
shown to Cobby, his elevation to an army command, were 
curious, perplexing and mal vus , especially in army circles. 
Of his own riflemen, though he had the admiration of some, 
the manners of others exhibited hostility in actual insolence: 
for the novelty of the umlungos (whites) had worn thin, and 
familiarity, owing mainly to Macray, had bred contempt, 


146 


BATTLE 147 

they little knowing what lightning and thunder is up the white 
man’s sleeve, and the manners of the Almighty. 

“You should tell a thing like that to the Queen herself,” 
the old Ngdeiho said, frowning. 

“I have failed to get a chance,” Cobby answered. 

“Her Majesty will now judge the courage of the men of 
your colour,” the general remarked. 

“You are not to be cheeky!” Cobby promptly responded 
with a cocked chin. 

On which general and staff eyed him up and down, with 
scowling, till Ngdeiho pointed. “Be gone in time!” and 
Cobby went away, saying: “Let the Queen know quickly.” 

Scout after scout, meantime, was coming in: Daisy had 
taken the initiative! was being helped by Sebingwe! had in¬ 
vaded Wo-Ngwanya! was in greater force by some four thou¬ 
sand assegais! and fleeing before his dancing imps and impis 
were the inhabitants of the land. By three in the afternoon 
the great square of Eshowe was emptied, but for two regiments 
and Cobby’s riflemen, who also were called “a regiment,” 
though but seven hundred strong, most of the Wo-Ngwanya 
stock of firearms having proved to be old carbines, which, 
as they had lowered his average of smartness, he had cut out. 
And soon after three he, too, on receiving marching-orders, 
started out, Macray looking like Sancho Panza on a nag 
under his Ali’s flank, group after group of damsels dancing 
mad darting out from the multitude to dance before the ad¬ 
vance of his drums and standard, and clap their frantic 
palms; and down the course of Black River eastward the way 
was, he keeping in touch with a regiment which preceded him. 

Meantime, somewhere in the eastern blue and infinity of 
the day, the Queen, within a group of ten riders, held at her 
eyes a field-glass with which Macray had presented her, and 
anon was fleeing out of the way of advance patrols of the 
enemy. 

And so for three days. When, during the forenoon of the 
fourth, Cobby’s battalion, singing the war-song, came up with 


148 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

the war-host, it was to witness war-dancing, and conflict im¬ 
minent, the armies being ranked on a plain, with a horizon 
of hills which on the south were mountains, a river flowing 
southward through it, to tumble with a roaring and smoking 
into precipice that bounded the plain on the south; and on 
its west bank the Wa-Ngwanya had set up at intervals five 
miles of stockade. 

Far to the east Cobby’s glass could make out two villages, 
and, standing apparently in fields of millet before an edge 
of forest the front of the M’Niami army long drawn out; and 
while he looked, the old Wo-Ngwanya general, Ngdeiho, came 
cantering down the slope from the western hills to the host 
west of the water, to send out orders for the advance, on which 
his army began a barking of the throat and thorax that gruffed 
Ho! and Ho! like hundred-ton guns going off, tremendous, 
terrorizing. 

Cobby, meantime, imagined that his decision to take no 
part in the battle had been duly communicated to the Queen; 
but, in truth, the old Ngdeiho, for reasons of his own un¬ 
friendly to Cobby, had said not a word to her; being, more¬ 
over, of an old school, and having a conservative dislike of 
rifles, he had determined to win the fight without them, since 
Cobby’s revolt offered him the opportunity. 

But, in fact, the rifles were a main part of the Queen’s 
plan of battle; and, on spying from the hills the arrival of 
Cobby’s riflemen, she had let fall the remark: “Daisy ought 
to have attacked two hours ago: now me have him.” 

The enemy being in greater force, she meant to surprise 
them at the height of the fighting with more frightfulness of 
rifle-fire uproar than they had ever dreamt of, and, their 
morale thus shattered, meant to launch among them a second 
astonishment of cavalry, which she had well hidden in forest. 

The Wa-Ngwanya crossed the river at a trot, gruffing their 
rough grunts in rhythm with their trotting footfalls, and “not 
all the Uhlans and Gardes Cavalleries galloping with sabres 
waving into battle,” Cobby writes, “could offer a sight more 


BATTLE 


149 


gallant than that host of negroes careering with streaming 
headgears, trailing kilts of tails, knee tails, elbow tails, with 
tufted shields, sheaves of spears sheening, many of them 
patterns of athlete manhood. And about a mile east of the 
river the armies crashed with a row which clearly reached 
us, which at closer quarters must have been, as old Marco 
Polo says, ‘like heaven’s thunder.’ ” 

But it was not long before Daisy’s weight of numbers com¬ 
menced to make itself felt; not long before, southward, he 
was attempting with some success a flanking movement; and 
just then a messenger from the western hills came racing 
down to Cobby. 

He, lying in a little wood of wild coffee behind his battal¬ 
ion, who, too, lay about the ground, gazing at the battle, was 
suddenly conscious of a despatch-rider drawing upon his 
haunches to throw off the message: “Captain, the Queen say 
Attack now halfway between the centre and the south.” 

Cobby sprang up appalled. 

“Has the Queen not been told that I am not going to lead 
the rifles?” he demanded. 

“No, she say Go now! Not stop to talk!” the messenger 
urgently shouted. 

Meantime, many of the riflemen were crowding round to 
stare, while Cobby stamped a little about, pestered with 
weight of responsibility, at his wits’ end, until he said sharply 
to the messenger, “Fly, now! Say that I sent to tell the 
Queen days ago—ask if I shall send them forward under a 
lieutenant—fly!” 

Amid a groaning of the men who heard it, the messenger 
turned and galloped, flogging his nag; and those round Spicie- 
wegiehotiu asserted later that when she saw him returning, 
and waited, and the guns did not stir, she slowly turned pale 
to death, went faint, let her forehead drop down upon her 
horse’s neck. 

Meantime, with every minute the Wa-Ngwanya were being 
involved in deeper distress and loss of blood, and the M’Niami, 


150 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

pressing forward, were presently treading upon enemy dead; 
rueing to see which, Cobby was keenly on the look out for 
an answer to his message, and when he saw two horsemen 
galloping down the hills, he, imagining that they were for 
him, called his men to ’tention; but the horsemen did not 
come near him, steering their race for the forest in which 
the cavalry waited; and presently out of the forest in column 
of sections came tearing a storm of horses in staring haste, 
swept away between two lengths of the stockade, crossed the 
stream, and after darting past their own army, pounced 
howling among the host of foemen. 

But though no little disarray and death resulted, the dis¬ 
array was transitory—cavalry combat being, in fact, foreign 
to black armies. The old Ngdeiho had a prejudice against 
it, as had Daisy, nor had there been cavalry in Wo-Ngwanya 
before Spiciewegiehotiu, who herself employed it rather to 
awe than to slaughter. In general, the mass of riders could 
not contrive to cohere in the melee, and when his animal was 
speared, the man, finding himself isolated in a grove of iron, 
gave up the ghost. 

All which Cobby saw with his heart in his mouth, feeling 
that, if she was defeated through him, that would be more 
than was good for his compunction; and seeing the sidling 
eyes of his men on him, and no answer coming to his message, 
he was thinking of repeating the message, when he became 
aware of the Queen herself sweeping down on her Selim well 
ahead of half-a-dozen chargers which rushed after her, she 
rushing down like a sharp shower to her army, to gallop 
past not twenty yards from him, with never a glance his 
way, her Selim’s eyes wide, his ears lying flat back like a 
cat’s, the battery of his hoofs thrumming the sod with a 
strong rolling of drums, she like a jockey wedded head-down 
to his neck, and, because of the horns that vaulted from her 
helmet, resembling a bull bounding head-down along, to butt 
and toss. And across the river-rocks she crashed, across the 
savannah, to vanish in the throng of champions. 


BATTLE 151 

Cobby in a sort of rapture, went red in the face, shouting 
after her “Cceur de Lion!" 

But Spiciewegiehotiu was of another type: not lion’s heart, 
but man’s head, nor valour, but discretion, being her trait; 
and though a rally did follow her advent in the battle-ranks, 
her object was not to rally, hut rapidly to withdraw: for her 
eye, ever quick, simple-seeing, and sure of itself, had spied 
that the day was lost for her. She rode straight for the old 
Ngdeiho, screaming at him: “Why you not retreat?” and 
ere long the tom-toms were beating it. 

Then she showed some lion’s heart: for to the river itself 
she remained with her men in the thick of the retreat, some¬ 
times hustled, harassed, prancing, an arrow sticking out of 
Selim’s bosom like a bowsprit riding a rough sea. And 
in Parthian order the Wa-Ngwanya stepped backward and 
back, streaming with sweat of afternoon heat, white as black 
can be, with wide and snorting nostril, but still—in good 
order. And now they were at the river, soon to find them¬ 
selves behind their miles of stockade and wire-entanglements 
of spiked mimosa; and then it was Daisy who pretty quickly 
was thinking of retreat. 

Cobby saw the sovereign, looking very haggard, canter back 
past his battalion, without glancing his way; and it was with 
a disquietude within him that he went out with the carts 
and stretchers of rimpi, whose Red Cross was crimson branches 
of (young) matchebela, he taking surgical instruments and 
anaesthetics, to stoop among the wounded on the stricken 
field, where he saw a scene of slaughter even now not over, 
for the hopelessly wounded of both peoples were speared 
by their own comrades, a scene that made Cobby so sick, 
that often he was hissing words like “that murderess!” “that 
cursed girl!” 

He went back pallid, and there again before him near the 
river was the Queen on horseback in front of what was left 
of the cavalry; and though she addressed them rather in 
sorrow than in wrath, every head was bent before her, “Go 


152 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

back home,” Cobby could just hear her say: “me win with¬ 
out you; me not give you a chance to fail again: go back 
home.” As he drew near, she cantered away westward. 

He now saw himself an object of scorn among all the Wa- 
Ngwanya: for the news of his refusal to fight had flown, his 
death was being foretold, and the man who bore him his eve¬ 
ning meal threw it before him; nor could he explain the 
motif of his revolt, for that would have been very indecorous, 
militarily, politically; and alone—Macray having taken him¬ 
self off somewhither to prowl after Sueela—he sat till late, 
watching a swarming army scene of flames and men, messages, 
hastes, neighings, lowings, drummings, a great going to and 
fro and maelstrom of utterance; then went to climb into a 
hut on piles within a spinny of palmyras nigh under the 
hills, a lonesome old room covered with a roof broken and 
bent by its own weight, on whose bumpy floor for a bed he 
flung himself. 

But just before he slept, he started up, conscious, dark 
as it was in there, of some presence with him, and, snatching 
his revolver, he sharply asked: “Who are you?” 

“Cobby, my heart broken,” muttered the dejected voice of 
one seated near him. 

“You!” 

“Cobby, why you treat me so today?” 

“By heaven! You? But did I not send to tell you-? 

If you have been shocked, whose fault? You have shunned 

me- Yes, you suspected that I now know by whom all 

this slaughter was wantonly brought about, and, so that I 
might have no chance of resigning my command, you shunned 
me, imagining that when actually on the battlefield I should 

be impelled to obey the command to advance- You little 

know me-” 

“But tomorrow you will, for me, no?” 

“No, I will— not” 

Now she put her hand on his: and now there was stillness, 
he sitting there thrilled through and through. 





BATTLE 


153 


And on a sudden he roughly had her hand to possess him¬ 
self of her, on which she sprang sharp up, he after; she ran, 
he after; she dodging him to and fro, twisting like a swift, 
no word uttered, he working in an earnest dumbness but once 
to clap hand on her and rumple her by supremacy of muscle 
and summary pre-eminence of strength, and like dog and fox 
“at the death” they spurted, like a whirl of serpents doubling 
upon themselves, till for some moments he lost her, but then, 
alert of ear, heard her feet stealing, rushed upon her, and 
had her crushed soft to his body like a doll of rubber, teeth 
to teeth. 

“Oh, Cobby,” she panted at him, “don’t—kiss me like that, 
me—tear you to pieces.” 

He, handling her roughly, with sudden movements like 
convulsions of epilepsy, panted between feasts of kisses: 
“Murderess—gory hag—sweet as hell—well-beloved, by God 
—but cruel as the grave. . . .” 

And she, amid mixed half-pants, ranting half-words: “Oh, 
Cobby, you eat-” 

“Yes—food-” 

“Who you love, you madman?” 

“You!” 

“Oh, Cobby, a dog bite us. . . . Me he bite, then his red 
teeth poison you. . . . Cobby . . . Cousin Cobby . . . me 
show you own flesh and blood. . . . So, Cobby, now you 
fight, no?” 

Like ice upon white-hot this fell upon him; and in the 
same instant they stood separated, his soul wounded with the 
pernicious suspicion that even her kisses were political, even 
her gales calculated, that she gave nothing, but bartered 
everything, her brain ever half an inch ahead of her heart. 

“Would I not fight and die a thousand times-!” he cried 

out. “If your quarrel was just, there would be no need for 
me to fight: I can shatter and abolish a hundred African 
armies, just so lightly as you brush off a fly! As it is, I 
will— not ” 






154 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Now, to her mental habit both his boast and his moral 
motive were, of course, equally unreal and foreign, and 
“What!” she shrilly cried out with a stamp, “y ou say that 
after daring to kiss me?” 

And in an instant, as in “the transformation of forces,” all 
that electromotive force of love changed into heat of quarrel. 

“You put your hand on me!” he cried: “I did not divine 
that I was being tempted, in order to be bought. I will— 
not. There are under-officers who can command the 
rifles-” 

“Pooh, you must be silly,” she said bitterly, “if you not see 
that me want you to command them, and why me want.” 

“No, I don’t see. . . . Why?” 

“Oh, me go,” she muttered disgustedly, moving toward the 
doorway: “me done with you. Everybody cry out on me to 
kill you, but you go back where you come from—me let you 
when you want.” 

“Good! Good! I am done with you, too. I am off 
home—I shall forget your long name.” 

“That’s it!” she cried in a flush of quarrel, “you soon for¬ 
get! and me forget even your short name! You go—no good 
staying now—Wo-Ngwanya turn you out—everybody say you 
’fraid to fight! Our men can’t stand that.” 

“Ha! ha! ha!” he redly laughed, “how can you think it 
possible that I could get myself to care a little what ‘every¬ 
body says’? And how insolent of you to mention-” 

“You go! Me done,” she called over her shoulder just 
at the door. 

“Come back!” he commanded in a rush and flush of mas¬ 
tery, and dashed after her. 

Ten feet down she jumped, for some of those old ladder- 
rungs were missing; he jumped after her; she ran, he hard 
after. But, as there was no moon, and she flew straighter 
toward an end, he only came upon her when she had scram¬ 
bled upon a horse, whose hoofs, as she galloped off, spattered 
grit into his face. 




BATTLE 


155 


He then walked back through the palmyras with his fore¬ 
head on his palm, and, as he arrived at the ladder, some one 
sprang up out of the ground and touched his shoulder— 
Dzinikulu. 


XX 


COUP D’ETAT 

D ZINIKULU could not conceal his elation at the event 
of the day’s battle—Spiciewegiehotiu’s prestige for 
unfailing victory gone—or shaken. The fact was, he 
told Cobby, that a large number of Sebingwe’s men (north¬ 
west) had voluntarily flocked to join Daisy (northeast), thus 
swelling the M’Niami ranks, and Spiciewegiehotiu had bitten 
off more than she could chew! If the next day’s engagement 
went against her, her star was in disaster. Anyway, every¬ 
thing was ready for the carrying off—Dzinikulu’s all was 
staked upon it; let Cobby never be far from Dzinikulu dur¬ 
ing the next days. 

“Good!” said Cobby, sore and hot against Spiciewegiehotiu, 
and again “good!” led headlong by the lust of going out of 
captivity, not alone, but having his captor captive. . . . 

“But not a word of anything to Caray,” Dzinikulu said. 
“Leave Caray behind; me soon send him home.” 

“No, I am not going without Macray and Panda,” Cobby 

answered: “I don’t understand why-” 

“Well, then, we only tell Caray at the last moment—promise 
me that.” 

“Well, since you wish that. And I will wait south of the 
mountains till you send me my Panda.” 

“You wait long, then. The man dead.” 

Cobby stood dumb; Dzinikulu adding: “Last thing I hear 
before I leave Eshowe. Got belly-disease. Foul air. He 
dead at last.” 

“Oh, my friend!” Cobby cried out, “you died upbraiding 
me! Oh, how hard of heart!” 

156 



COUP D’ETAT 157 

“Eheh, she hard,” Dzinikulu agreed: “but wait—maybe her 
sun setting. Her day of doom dawn tomorrow.” 

At the hour when this was said of her, she, four miles 
southward, was pacing alone by the ravine’s brink, leading 
her horse, anon peering down into the abyss, deeply ponder¬ 
ing; and four miles westward on higher ground Macray was 
lying in bush, gazing through an Egyptian doorway into the 
ruins of a temple never built by Wa-Ngwanya hands, at the 
far end of which was a fire under a pot which a girl tended, 
and dim beyond the fire Sueela seated on a tooled stone of 
the ruins before her mother Mandaganya, who sat higher on 
a heap of stones, at Mandaganya’s feet a little dog, shaggy 
like a terrier, called “Ronja,” which was always near her, and 
was believed to be “a sensitive,” gifted with intuitions still 
quicker than the witch’s. 

Macray could not hear the words of their dejected speech, 
only its murmur. “She very grum and angry,” Sueela said: 
“me go to her, she not speak to me—she not speak to any¬ 
body. She say ‘Go away.’ ” 

Mandaganya’s quiet eyes that interned within them a cer¬ 
tain slumber and musing, rested on her daughter, as she re¬ 
marked with some satisfaction: “Now she know white man 
frightened to fight, now she can’t help killing him, for today 
he show himself the enemy of Wo-Ngwanya.” 

“No! you got it wrong,” Sueela protested: “Sir Cobby 
not frightened to fight—not he; he have some other reason.” 

“She love him, no?” the witch asked, peering forward. 

“Eheh.” 

“She love him much?” 

“Eheh, me think so. They in love with one another like 
cats fighting.” 

“Danger in that man,” the witch said, with one eye shrink¬ 
ing from the licks of a snake that lay round her brows, a 
band of freckles black and red: “something hanging over 
her, and that man in it.” Now the dog growled a little, and 
uttered a woof —so to say; on which the doctoress looked 


158 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

round, and suddenly asked: “Where Sanja?” meaning the 
cook-girl, who, having gone to gather fuel, had been pounced 
upon by Macray as a messenger, and now reappeared to say 
low to Sueela that somebody wanted her. 

“Which somebody?” demanded Mandaganya—“Caray?” 
and when the cook-girl looked confused, “Better mind how you 
go,” the doctoress said to her daughter with a nod and eye 
quiet yet weighty: “me show you white man, if it’s white man 
you want. Spiciewegiehotiu tear out your liver, if you go a 
step too far, and if she not tear it out, me tear it out.” 

On which Sueela, standing up, cut an eye, saying: “Oh, 
me not care for him: me know a god; me done with men —- 
and, having walked away into the darkness, said to Macray, her 
back on the ruin: “What you want?” 

“Susie-Susie,” said Macray: “my Sue. What the devil has 
become of you? Come on, let’s get into the bush.” 

“No, me not going,” she said, bending toward him, brushing 
him from each palm with the other: “me done, done, done. 
Me not like vicious men.” 

“No? Sure, Sue-Sue? Well, but me like vicious girls, you 
see, that’s why me dote on Sue. Look here, none of that!”— 
he gripped her bare arm, hurting her—“If you fancy you’re 
going to use me once for a lark, and then cast me off as you’ve 
been doing, you’ll find yourself up against the wrong man. I 
happen to want you, and I always have what I want. You 
dare try it on, and see if I don’t go straight to Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu and your mother, and tell them everything.” 

A menace at which heart quailed, and laid down arms. At 
his raised voice the girl glanced nervously toward her mother, 
who, much more visible now than previously, stood Athene- 
big within the sheen of a fume, greenish, luminous, she then 
burning herbs and bdelliums to inhale the incense, and enwrap 
herself in a state of “trance”; seeing which preoccupation, 
Sueela took quietly enough the marital domineering of Macray, 
though in the expression of her eyes a dangerous something 
smouldered. 


COUP D’ETAT 


159 


“You hurting me,” she mentioned. “How me to go with 
you when you see my mother there? Tomorrow after sunset 
you see me down the hill there.” 

Surrender—for the present. 

“Very well. ... Is that a bargain?” 

“Yes.” At once she walked away inward, and, as she went, 
her lips met vehemently to spit out disgust and gall. 

When she came again to her mother, Mandaganya stood 
astare with muttering lips, the little dog whimpering piteously 
at her feet; and, leaning an ear near, Sueela could hear the 
sybil breathe: “She conquer—she chuckle at their rout— 
Cow that toss the nations. . . . But beware of a tree—trouble, 
trouble—the heart cease beating . . .” upon which the pillar 
that she was staggered, to collapse sideward upon the pile of 
stones, and lie quiet over the little Ronja, which huddled with 
shudderings under her. 

Sueela then spread rugs for her mother, then picked a little 
supper with the little finger cocked aloft (this being considered 
chic!), then the long pipe, she clasping her knees, meditation 
in her eyes, then to sleep in fits; and before the sun rose was 
carrying out of the ruin her saddle of lamb-skin, to mount her 
Mustapha, and gallop a league nearer the front. 

At the hut chosen by the Queen for herself Sueela was told 
that the Queen had gone abroad long before, and, riding on to¬ 
ward the river, she presently spied Spiciewegiehotiu among a 
number of men near the ravine; stopping to watch, she saw 
that a branch had been hacked from a tamarind tree and 
lashed to the tree’s bottom, with one end projecting over the 
ravine’s edge; and presently when an officer crawled along to 
that projecting end, the watcher’s heart started to see him dash 
himself apparently down the precipice, the little crowd peering 
to see his ruin. 

Then another went, and it was the same—he vanished; then 
Spiciewegiehotiu went—and vanished; and now Sueela, with a 
catch of the breath that laughed, said: “Oh, there must be a 
rope”; but, even so, when she peered over the edge, her toes 


160 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


went cold, the scene of steepness and granite crag was so colos¬ 
sal, grand, and cosmic, on so solemn a scale, making men seem 
mosquitoes. Till then no mortal had ever thought of going 
down that gulf. 

Sueela ran nearer until she could actually see the rope of 
ife, but since bush here and there lay on the cliff-wall, she 
could not see Spiciewegiehotiu, who, going down with her toes 
on the rock anon, was now not forty feet from the bottom, when 
she halted to look down and call crossly to the two men al¬ 
ready down: “Why you not move away from there?” for 
they, just below, like astrologers watching the ruin of the 
moon, were musing on the athletics of her descent, but now, 
at her outcry of protest, strolled with a sullen reluctance away; 
and “come,” she said breathlessly the moment her foot touched 
bottom, and ran toward the sun—a rough voyage, all rocks 
and jumps and bush; on to where the river above came down, 
and changed to smokes that intoned, out of which they emerged 
drenched, to spurt on earnest, urgent, she ever ahead, losing 
never a moment, along the torrent’s course, through a canon 
anon so narrow, that there was scarcely space to step without 
wading through wet. 

The sun grew hot, the going was hot, the two officers threw 
off karosses, anon tossed sweat from the forehead, but Spicie¬ 
wegiehotiu was so constituted, that she could toil gaily along 
without heat or fatigue; and when three zebras broke from 
brake, and galloped away before them, her gaiety of gait grew 
yet gayer, her legs got wings, and “Na! my children,” she sang 
out to them, “we coming to something—me feel the breeze of 
my luck on me,” for the zebras meant an exit, which was what 
she was reconnoitring to find; and, as she went, she kept an 
eye on their spoor. 

After two hours of it she was walking up a ledge with the 
river left well below on her right; and before long was peering 
out across the plain at Daisy’s army all to the west of her, 
and no sentries anywhere near the ravine, believed to be inac¬ 
cessible. 


161 


COUP D’ETAT 

This was what she had scented and sought: and back she 
started, making such haste, that long before noon she was back 
at the rope; and, on being drawn up, saw accomplished what 
she had commanded—an impi posted with its right on the 
ravine, and a large number of branches lashed to trees, carry¬ 
ing ropes that hung into the abyss. 

As soon as she arrived she ordered an attack by all the army, 
except the rifles and the impi at the ravine—a feint attack 
meant to keep the enemy busy. By one o’clock Daisy had 
flung it back to its stockades, then himself retreated, himself 
seriously bleeding, for the Wa-Ngwanya had battled like devils. 
And again soon after two Spiciewegiehotiu launched an attack 
with the same orders, which had the same result; but now, in 
that hour of repeated defeat, to each regiment, as it rested, she 
sent out strychnia (orange-cider) and a message: “Spicie¬ 
wegiehotiu say Daisy done. Still one struggle for you before 
sunset, and then you drink victory like strychnia.” 

Meantime, even her own troops supposed that the impi 
posted near the ravine was still there; but all these hours the 
three rear-ranks of its four ranks had, squad by squad, been 
descending into the ravine with ration and weapon; of them 
two men only, having lost nerve, hurtled to death at the 
bottom; the others, fourteen thousand, having passed down 
the canon, cast themselves upon the back of the M’Niami army 
in a moment when the sunset battle was at its hottest: there 
they suddenly came hurtling, like hosts of spectres hurled up 
howling out of the hole of hell; and never was surprise more 
wild, or fright more wide-eyed. The M’Niami army ran a 
rabble north-westward, like cataract-waters along the only 
path open to them, and cast no eye behind: the Wa-Ngwanya 
in the half-dark darted after. 

Among the last of the pursuers, cantering in a troop of six 
horsemen, was Spiciewegiehotiu, who suddenly drew rein, 
laughed, and remarked: “Me weary,” for since daybreak, 
toiling constantly with brain and body, she had tasted nothing; 
and, as one of her six, a household-officer, carried a basket 


162 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


stuffed with foods and drink, soon the group was within the 
cave of a tree, where one M’Niami lay dead on his face with 
them, they seated round platters of wood on a skin, she carous¬ 
ing en bon camarade with her guests like a man-of-the-world 
among men, quaffing her liquor in a flush of spirits, all gossip 
and comment on the day’s events; ever she said: “Na! my 
children”; and when one fellow said, “Yesterday me ’fraid the 
Queen get speared,” she winked, and snapped her fingers, re¬ 
marking: “Na! my children, the iron that is to pierce Spicie- 
wegiehotiu not yet smelted!”—till all at once all were on their 
feet, pierced with the iron of the spear of fear, the tree sur¬ 
rounded, Dzinikulu filling the opening that looked southward, 
saying dryly, with a leg cocked: “Spiciewegiehotiu, you 
mine: me send you back to your own country.” 

Spiciewegiehotiu stood quite white, while half a chuckle, 
silly, hysteric, escaped her. 

The brief twilight was done, but nut-tapers within the tree re¬ 
vealed her. 

As Dzinikulu spoke, a clatter of hoofs was heard, and Cobby 
turned up in the same instant that two of the Queen’s six, hav¬ 
ing recovered their wits, made a dash to use their short-spears 
(stabbers), and die; and even as the Queen called to them 
“Stop!” one dropped dead in the tree-entrance. 

On which Dzinikulu, pale, but master of himself, said: 
“Come, lady—nothing to fear—everybody treat you well. You 
come, no?” 

She bent her head in consent; whereupon Cobby, outside the 
tree, bid Dzinikulu send now for Macray. 

“Where Caray is?” Dzinikulu asked, and when Cobby an¬ 
swered : “Other side of the river somewhere,” Dzinikulu 
shrugged, muttering, “Big space, ‘somewhere,’ ” while Spicie¬ 
wegiehotiu, with a conjurer-quickness, whispered to the near¬ 
est of her five: “Caray with Sueela ”—which chanced to be 
true, though she did not suppose it true; but she hoped that, 
if one seeking Macray went to Sueela, Sueela might scent out 
what had happened. 


COUP D’ETAT 163 

At the same time Cobby said to Dzinikulu: “He won’t be 
far—let him know now.” 

On which the fellow to whom the Queen had whispered 
volunteered information: “Me see Sir Caray go out to the 
ruin to see the lady Sueela, if you want Sir Caray.” 

And now Dzinikulu beckoned to an officer of his to say to 
him: “Go, find Sir Caray. Say Come to Sir Cobby. If he 
ask why, say you not know. If he talking to anybody, wait 
till he done. If he with the lady Sueela, she on our side, but 
if she ask where the Queen is, better say you not know. You 
not know anything yet.” 

And off the officer galloped. 


XXI 


SUEELA SPEEDS 

B EYOND the river the officer discovered a servant of 
Macray who told him that Macray had ridden westward: 
and off for the hills he galloped. 

The back of the ruin, whose front looked down on cliff, 
presently appearing on the night-sky, he cantered up a bush- 
path toward it, hearing before him, a man singing—Macray, 
who on his sauntering horse was singing aloud, “We shall meet 
in the sweet by and by”; and soon the messenger was saying to 
him: “Sir Caray, Sir Cobby say Come at once.” 

To which Macray, “in drink,” answered: “What’s it all 
about? Not I. Let Mahomet come to the mountain, my boy. 
Tell him Sir Caray going to meet the sweetest lady in the 

land. Tell him-” But now at a bend Sueela appeared 

before him. 

She started at the presence of another with him, and started 
afresh when she heard the known voice of a Dzinikulu officer 
say: “Oh, you better: Sir Cobby say Come quick.” 

“Sue,” Macray remarked, “they want to drag me away—not 
likely!” 

“You come to see my mother, no?” Sueela said, for reputa¬ 
tion’s sake, adding: “But, if Sir Cobby want you . . 

“Let Sir Cobby hang himself.” 

“So where Sir Cobby is?” Sueela now asked the messenger; 
and when he answered: “Beyond the river,” her heart started, 
her wits quickened, and, standing at the shoulder of Macray’s 
horse, she asked: “And the Queen—where she now, Sintowe?” 

“Me not know,” was the answer: “maybe chasing the 
enemy.” 


164 


SUEELA SPEEDS 165 

But “not know” and “maybe” rang untrue; and in a moment 
more Sueela cried out “Oh!” in a tone of pain, and fell. 

“Why, what’s wrong?” cried Macray. 

“Oh! the horse stamp on my foot,” Sueela mourned. 

“Oh, my Sue!” rued Macray, dismounting, “damn the half 
a horse,” and, as he bent over her, she whispered him quick: 
“Tell him to send Sanja to me.” 

On which Macray said to the messenger: “You gallop on 
up and tell her servant Sanja to come with a bandage,” and, 
as the officer galloped off, Sueela eagerly said, “My foot not 
hurt, but me think maybe the Queen captured.” 

At once Macray was sober and alert. “You think that?” 

“Eheh. How Sir Cobby come to send a Dzinikulu man? 
Maybe when Daisy fly, she follow with only a few men, and 
Dzinikulu take her—my mother say she in danger. You go 
with this man across the river, then try to find out where she 
is, and which way they taking her; then gallop back to me: me 
wait for you near the river.” 

“Right!” 

“Now me go on up: you wait here for Sintowe. Maybe 
when he call Sanja, my mother hear, and, if she find me with 
you, she kill me.” 

At once she ran, then when the messenger reappeared, went 
limping, seeing with him, not only Sanja, but, to her horror, 
her mother coming, a tower trotting, a board of a box in her 
hand. 

As they met, Sueela, braving the peril from her mother, 
mentioned to the messenger: “He down there waiting for 
you”; on which the messenger cantered on down, and in the 
same moment the board descended on her head. 

She collapsed upon the path, and like one chopping wood 
with a measured process, Mandaganya steadily banged the 
bent head, with humphs of the bosom that ever uttered “white 
man." Up the doctoress heaved, and, as down she brought 
the board, out of her bosom sounded “white man”; and up it 
went, and down came, with “white man ”—like a mechanism 


166 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


acting, until at last the excellent girl’s skull proved harder 
than the board, which split. 

Such was the consolation which Mandaganya gave to an in¬ 
step supposed to be crushed. . . . 

But now it was Sueela’s turn to strike; and, picking herself 
up with dry eyes, dryly she remarked: “You done? Well, 
listen to this: me think Spiciewegiehotiu kidnapped”—making 
Mandaganya faint. 

Meantime, Macray was cantering eastward, his wits on the 
qui vive, but seeming easy and careless; anon he hummed; 
anon offered drink from a flask to the officer; and, east of the 
river, asked: “What Sir Cobby want me for?” 

“He going from Wo-Ngwanya,” the other answered, seeing 
no reason to be secret now. 

“I guessed as much,” Macray said. “He has got the Queen, 
then, has he?” 

“You soon see.” 

“I see already. Well, good job—I’m glad enough to be 
getting home. So how many men has Dzinikulu with him?” 

“About seventy.” 

“All mounted?” 

“Eheh: they officers.” 

“And which way are we going out of Wo-Ngwanya?” 

“Along the foothills near the sea.” 

“Sea,” was his last word on earth, he dropping shot by 
Macray’s revolver, then his horse dropping; and Macray was 
racing back westward. 

A little east of the river he met Sueela on her Mustapha 
speeding to meet him; and “They have her,” he said: “seventy 
horses . . . taking her the sea way. . . .” 

Her hands met wringing on her rein. “Oh, Caray, you do 
what me tell you, no?” she pleaded—“me give you all—if they 
take her, me dead, dead, dead. So you fly to Eshowe, no? 
The cavalry that she sent home—tell them to ride through 
the Lion’s Pass; maybe you catch them up halfway to Eshowe. 
Show them this ring from me: say Spiciewegiehotiu gone, gone, 


167 


SUEELA SPEEDS 

say fly! You change horses at Bundhlwana’s Kraal—come, 
me give you a guide”—and westward across the river they gal¬ 
loped together to the rifles, who alone of the fighting army 
were not out after the flying M’Niami; and, even while her 
stallion ran, Sueela was leaping down to a rifle-lieutenant 
named M’Pandiu, to pant at him her passion of tidings. 

“But me have no orders—me daren’t move,” M’Pandiu in a 
torment of perplexity informed her, upon which, this M’Pandiu 
having been her lover in her twelfth year, she took him by the 
shoulders, half-kneeling, beseeching him: “Me good to you— 

me give you all—M’Pandiu—you will , no?—for me-” by 

which she achieved that within five minutes Macray was off, 
galloping westward with one of the riflemen as guide, and 
within ten she herself in the midst of a squad of fifteen riflemen 
—all who could get horses quickly—was galloping south- 
westward for the pass called Molimo’s (God’s) Pass. 

Eastward, meantime, cantered the troop of seventy with 
Spiciewegiehotiu and her five, she on a horse not her own in 
the van with Dzinikulu, to escape the dust of the hoofs, for it 
was late September, final end of the dry season, and turbulent 
breezes from the sea turned the herd of hoof-beats into a whirl 
of dust which j ourneyed and j ourneyed; and with Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu and Dzinikulu ahead rode a little troop of officers, be¬ 
hind them Cobby on his Ali. 

She had uttered no word to any one, nor Cobby a word to 
her, in his nerves a shrinking of compunction for her, a prick 
of contrition. But, as on she travelled, the hilarity of the 
gale and of the flight overcame her grumness of pride, she 
threw away her helmet, taking the gale in her face and hair, 
and touched with gaiety, occasionally made a good-tempered 
remark to Dzinikulu—always some comment on his conduct of 
the coup. “Why you not do it yesterday when Daisy beat me, 
Prince?” she demanded: “today when me victorious, and the 
people full of me, me think you run too much risk”—her in¬ 
tellect always preoccupied with strategy, with conduct, with 
the God’s truth as to what one should best do to gain one’s 



168 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


ends in any given group of events. And presently again she 
remarked: “Why you have all these men with you? Me 
shouldn’t have had half so many, if it had been me, or me 
should have had ten times more. They too many for some 
reasons, and too few for others.” And presently again: 
“That man you sent to bring Sir Caray ought to have caught 
us up before this. Me think Caray kill him, and then tell 
Sueela me captured. Why you sent for Caray? Me see six 
risks for you in that! If Sueela know tonight, me think you 
fail.” 

“Sueela on my side!” cried out Dzinikulu. 

At which she cast back her head, and laughed with the winds. 
“The trees pink, you think?” she asked: “people who reckon 
wrong die young, Prince.” 

Some minutes afterwards the cavalcade stopped at a village 
called Masinka’s Kraal, where some provisions and forage 
awaited it on sumpter-mules; and soon was off anew through 
Daisy-territory, a granite country with reefs of quartz anon, 
and granite kopies, and frequent forests, and mountain on the 
right, a ride of gloom, until at two the moon rose, they now 
going south among hills of porphyritic granite, rich in copper, 
whence at one spot a sheet of sea appeared tossing in sleep 
under sheen of the moon, and Spiciewegiehotiu, peering at the 
scenery of it and the Florida on its rocks, drew up, and would 
not move on. 

Presently after which the cavalcade was making westward 
over plain south of the mountains; while away to the west 
Sueela and her fifteen were finishing the descent of the moun¬ 
tains through a chasm formed by a vast dyke of trap, whence, 
as dawn broke, they spied the southern gateway of the gorge; 
and there, sending out a scout, paused. Almost without food, 
the men shared with Sueela a bag of groundnuts which she had 
snatched, giving tree-leaves to their nags. 

It was broad day when their scout came tearing back, chased 
up the foothills before the gorge by three riders; upon which 
rifle-fire broke out of bush at the gorge’s mouth, causing the 


SUEELA SPEEDS 


169 


three pursuing riders to bite the dust. But the news brought 
by the scout was already known—that Dzinikulu was on a 
kopie a league to the east and south, apparently waiting for 
something. 

“Waiting, maybe, for Sir Cobby’s waggons from Eshowe,” 
Sueela said. 

Her plan now was (1) to strike terror, and (2) to gain time: 
so soon she had out an envoy, bearing a branch of embassy; 
and he, a hundred yards from the kopie, where he was met by 
Dzinikulu, Cobby and some others, uttered his message: “The 
lady Sueela say Why the Prince carry off the Queen like this? 
That was foolishness. The lady Sueela has 150 rifles with her, 
and Wo-Ngwanya rushing like a river to interview the prince. 
Let the prince send the Queen back quick, then the lady Sueela 
guarantee the safety of the rebels.” 

Here for Dzinikulu was set-back in business. He swept his 
palm down his beard, glancing back at the Queen, who was 
walking round and round the kopie’s top, her hands behind 
her, eyeing the flight of the clouds. 

“Sueela lie,” he said: “she only have a few with her: we 
soon kill them.” 

But now Cobby spoke: he was not there to kill; and there 
was dissension. 

In the end the envoy was sent back with the threat that 
Sueela’s handful would be killed. 

And presently there came to the kopie another envoy with 
threats, and was sent back with threats; and then another. 
Meanwhile the sun was mounting for Sueela toward noon. 

And now arose dust-cloud in the west—cavalry sent by 
Macray; and Spiciewegiehotiu, peering at it through her field- 
glass over one of the boulders that formed a parapet to the 
kopie, remarked to the Prince with her detached and disinter¬ 
ested interest in strategy: “It was too risky, Prince!” 

And now on the kopie were speculative brows perplexed 
with crosses prospecting over the plain, and now bloodshed 
for Cobby, whether he liked it or not, life at stake for all, and 


170 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


woe to the conquered. Came and came the dust-cloud; out 
dashed Sueela and her handful, galloping, to meet it; and it 
was still forenoon when the kopie was within a ring of horses; 
spear, arrow and bullet going; man and beast feasting together 
on the taste of death. 

The defenders, though they had some cover, were crowded 
together in comparison with the attackers, and, since on the 
kopie were but five firearms, of which Cobby’s rifle was idle, 
the knot of kopie horses dropped fast: seeing which, Dzinikulu 
was for seating the Queen on a horse, and leading it round the 
kopie, so that the besiegers, fearing to pierce her, might leave 
off; but here again was veto from Cobby, and dissension. 

“We all going to be killed!” exclaimed Dzinikulu in an 
epilepsy of debate: “you say no to everything!” 

And Cobby, all blanched, answered, “She will refuse to be 
made a target, unless you bind her. . . . Would you bind 
her?” 

“Yes! Why not?” cried Dzinikulu. 

“Well, if any one touches her, I fell him,” said Cobby. 

She, seated in leafage under cover of a rock at the kopie’s 
circumference, could not hear what was said, but could see dis¬ 
sension, could see the slaughter going on among some of the 
horses, and the growing revolt of the others, and greyness of 
terror in every face. 

During all which Cobby’s waggons turned up westward, 
halting some hundreds of yards outside the circle of attackers, 
to be abandoned by the Dzinikulu men with them, who, on see¬ 
ing how things were, at once fled. 

Upon those waggons dwelt Cobby’s glass: there was that 
within them which could compel and shatter Africa allied with 
Asia. . . . 

But the attackers were much the more numerous, were clos¬ 
ing in, throwing surer: and disarray ensued, some of the mob 
of kopie horses going dog-mad, rearing loose to scoot down the 
steep, and range the plain in a lunacy of mutiny and freedom; 
in the midst of which Dzinikulu and two others in debate came 


SUEELA SPEEDS 


171 


to a decision without Cobby—to fly, taking Spiciewegiehotiu, 
through Daisy-territory, to the kingdom of Sebingwe (Wo- 
Mashenya), who had for the Queen an evil will. To do her 
then and there to death they feared—feared Cobby’s repeater, 
feared the frenzy of the people. 

The Prince then trotted all breathless to Cobby to pant 
asthmatic: “The day lost! We fly with her—to Sebingwe—- 
he treat her well—from there you take her to your country.” 

Upon which Cobby, flying away to Spiciewegiehotiu with a 
wild white face, the Prince’s rasping breast trotting ponder¬ 
ously after, panted at her: “We make a rush-through with 
you— We can force you to come, remember, by Heaven 
... Do you come?” 

She did not answer, did not see, him. To Dzinikulu, look¬ 
ing up, she said: “Me come,” and sprang from the ground. 

And in some minutes she, with the Prince and two, and 
Cobby on his Ali, were clattering down the rockside, a cataract 
of hoofs, whose impetus easily broke a road eastward through 
the streams of spears speeding to intercept, the presence of the 
Queen, whose rein the Prince himself held, acting as a shield 
to the fugitives on one side, the pursuers fearing to strike her; 
and as all the fugitives were much better horsed, they had won 
well ahead of the foremost of the pursuers, when they became 
conscious of a solitary horse, stretched and staring, hunting 
them, Sueela’s Mustapha, Sueela like a monkey on its mane. 

She had raced from the west region of the ring of attackers, 
passing not far south of the kopie eastward, braving the rain 
of spear and arrow that the kopie spat out at her, she plead¬ 
ing to her animal’s ear, and soon was within a stone’s-throw 
of the fugitives; upon which Spiciewegiehotiu, having spied 
that she had a rifle, shouted aloud: “Stop, Prince, or you all 
get shot!” 

At the same time one of the two blacks with Dzinikulu, 
who had a carbine, fired behind, but wide; and in the next sec¬ 
ond Sueela fired, not at the Prince, whom she flinched from 
injuring, but at his horse, which faltered, pitched, and knelt 


172 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

wrecked, pitching the Prince forward among thorns of mimosa 
bush. 

His two blacks galloped on, and got away eastward, Cobby 
was off southward; but ere the Prince could pick himself up, 
he was a prisoner within a ring of spears, while the Queen and 
Sueela, on foot, on each other’s bosom, were looking, not at 
each other, but dumbly away at the sheet of spears aimed at 
Cobby by his chasers. “Me go stop them,” Sueela suddenly 
muttered, on which the Queen pushed her a little toward her 
Mustapha, and she was off. 

But Cobby was well ahead of all, and well horsed. He, in 
a redness of resentment at fate and the black man, had started 
out to get at his waggons—instinctively, to be in his citadel; 
and after making a large detour southward, then westward, a 
wound in his right calf, he lighted from his Ali upon one of the 
waggons well in time to get his little Vicker’s belted and 
pointed upon the on-coming mob of horsemen. Now he was 
lord of continents. He had thumbs on thumb-pieces to play 
them a piano-tune of quaver and semi-quaver, zip and zip-zip, 
but—did not; did not will to kill; and within three minutes 
stood a prisoner in the midst of a pretty furious troop of them. 

Presently after which the kopie surrendered. . . . 

And near three in the afternoon the Queen, making north¬ 
ward through Molimo’s Pass with her tail of prisoners, was 
met by half her army darting to her rescue, bearing, too, the 
news that Daisy’s great-place had been taken; and when, in the 
gloaming, she approached her capital, she was like a mote 
floating on an Atlantic of humanity madly dancing, howling 
hozannas, all the town of Eshowe with her war-host now 
swarming like many waters sounding about her, she seated up¬ 
lifted on a waggon in the seat of Cobby’s monoplane, little 
dreaming that the thing might fly away with her; and, riding 
beside her, Sueela, at whom she ever pointed, animated, laugh¬ 
ing, as who should say: “She did it! dance to her /” and on 
foot behind her, tired to death, tied together, Dzinikulu and 
Cobby. 


XXII 


SUEELA WASHED WHITE 

F OR Dzinikulu now was solitude in his guarded hut, till, 
five days after the fiasco of the kidnapping, he began to 
undergo due trial in the kotla, or square, the Queen 
keeping out of it in her hut, not herself sitting a judge. But 
by her the judges had been chosen. 

Day after day half the square was packed, hanging upon 
the witnesses, a wide swing-round of feeling in favour of the 
Prince having arisen and spread, a wild hope that he might 
survive. He was Wo-Ngwanya; Spiciewegiehotiu, after all, a 
novelty out of the sea and the clouds, a being full of lucks and 
glories, but not the rank old Africa of God. 

Men said now that the Prince had been tempted and led 
astray by the white man. And the question was, why was 
this white man, who, though so strangely favoured, had 
shrunk from going forward against Daisy, and had almost 
caused the loss of the war, why was he not there on his trial 
with the Prince and the rest, but kept smuggled away in “The 
Elephant”? Was the Prince by chance to die, and not he, the 
cause of all? That would be Justice! This was a sore and 
jealous point with Wo-Ngwanya, and the name of Cobby, 
though it stank, was in every mouth. 

Then a rumour flew—none knew its source—that Cobby was 
about to be banished, but not killed, lest the king of his coun¬ 
try, who was known to rule over huge hosts in the blue of the 
sea, should bring trouble upon Wo-Ngwanya: and the sowing 
of this rumour produced some diminution in the tumult of 
tongues. 


173 


174 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


But when, in the fifth twilight of the trial, the Prince and 
many others were condemned to death, a dumbness of awe and 
sorrow fell upon the populace, and a sense of resentment. 

That night Dzinikulu in his hut attempted suicide; but failed 
to die. 

And this only enhanced the emotion of tragic pity and 
shrinking now associated with the Prince. Some of the wiz¬ 
ards, braving the resentment of Mandaganya, now afresh in¬ 
sisted that his death would be unholy, passionately a filth, a 
shudder, and spat out the notion; and to Spiciewegiehotiu came 
deputations—chieftain and headman from afar, General and 
Chief-of-the-tax, in twos, threes, tens: let her slay the rest, be¬ 
fore all the white firebrand, but reprieve the Prince, last of 
the old Race. The first of these the Queen received quietly, 
heard silently; with the third she flew into a passion; the rest 
she heard with respect, weighing their words, without saying 
anything. 

On the fourth day after his condemnation, at an hour when 
the dusks of sundown were already come, the death-drum 
sounded for Dzinikulu in the square. Many people were then 
hoping for his reprieve; few were present. He was carried in 
a cart, so that it might not be seen that he could not now stand 
without support; and he was borne bodily to the block, moan¬ 
ing in pain, but quite composed to die. As his greying head 
fell, those present covered their faces, gave out a groan, and 
suddenly fled away in every direction to utter the story of his 
cutting off. 

But he was no sooner dead than the rumour was being busily 
bruited that the Prince had been arm-in-arm with Daisy, and 
had meant to betray the army—a baseless rumour, doubtless; 
and his death had been so timed, that on the very day follow¬ 
ing arrived the war-indemnity from Daisy, multitudes of cattle 
lowing in the kotla, crass souls spattering cataracts of drop¬ 
pings, with profligacies of slaughter, and free feeding, to ren¬ 
der the populace gay and forgetful. 

And in the following days they saw the beheadal of all the 


175 


SUEELA WASHED WHITE 

Prince’s known confederates—a hecatomb of blood. No 
pleading could rescue, no plea prevail, Fate not deafer than 
the ear of the Queen. “Only the white man survive,” Wo- 
Ngwanya said. 

He, meanwhile, lay dark—and sick: fever!—perhaps from 
the arrow-wound in his calf, or from that sightless air, or from 
his mind. 

This time he was alone in his room—that he might the better 
reflect perhaps; this time had no electric hand-lamp; when he 
was delirious, within and without darkness reigned for him, 
and his home was in the realm of the old Anarch Chaos. 

Always his warders asked him why he did not send a mes¬ 
sage to the Sinderngabya (Guardian of the Sad) : but he would 
do nothing but suffer. 

However, it became known outside that he was sick. Sueela 
one night heard it at her mother’s, and flew home with the 
news. 

Yet it was some time before, lying in a vine-arbour, looking 
out at moonlight, she uttered: “Cobby sick.” 

Spiciewegiehotiu did not answer. 

And presently again Sueela, restively: “How long he got 
to be in that place?” 

Spiciewegiehotiu glanced coldly aside at her. “Why you 
ask?” 

“You only hurting yourself, my girl!” cried out Sueela. 

“No, me pleasing myself. Me warned him! Now let him 
suffer, and think. When me hit me hurt. It is cruel to pun¬ 
ish and not punish enough.” 

“So you keep him in that filthy hole whether he sick or 
well, Spiciewegiehotiu?” 

“Yes. You sorry?” 

“And if he die?” 

Spiciewegiehotiu shrugged. 

At which shrug Sueela started, shrinking, breathing “My 
God!” and again the Queen’s glance dwelt with high eyebrows 
and icy eye-corners on her. 


176 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

So the next day Sueela went to Mandaganya, and knelt say¬ 
ing: “Ma-Sueela, go to him! You go, no? Maybe you do 
him good.” 

Upon which the doctoress studied her under a puzzled frown. 
“Why you care like this?” 

“You think me not love him to my heart?” the daughter 
frankly answered with a sob: “but not like another man—you 
not understand—Cobby a god—he very good, he very great— 
you hear how he cut off those three soldiers’ legs, and they 
not know! they not feel any pain! and now they hop about. 
. . . You go, no?” 

And presently the mother said: “Eheh, me go, me go”; 
and the next day went. 

To her no permission to visit was necessary: the doors flew 
open, the prison-men prostrating themselves before her pres¬ 
ence; and, sitting with her little dog by Cobby’s bed, gorgeous 
reds of torchlight on her visage, she said to him: “You my 
enemy: you want to carry off my Queen; but you sick, me 
come to see you, me bring you medicine.” 

Water sprang to Cobby’s eyes; he caught and kissed her 
hand. 

“Why you not send a message to Spiciewegiehotiu?” the 
sybil asked, her hand on his forehead: “say Me burning with 
fever; say Let me out.” 

He tossed for ease, moaning: “Never that—never that.” 

“Spiciewegiehotiu good-hearted,” she told him: “but, if she 
let you out, everybody say: See! Dzinikulu dead, but the 
white man free, and-” 

“Is Dzinikulu dead?” 

“Eheh, he well dead; no more Dzinikulu. They say you 
tempt him, but he tempt you: he well dead: me dance naked 
on his grave. . . . But tell me something me can do for you.” 

He clung to her hand. “Oh, some light—quinine—my 
medicine-chest-” 

She asked, and he told her, how to discover the medicine- 



177 


SUEELA WASHED WHITE 

box, which two days later came to him; nor after that was he 
ever long without the solace of the shine of a torch in his 
night; and while Mandaganya was being rowed homeward 
through the gloom under “The Elephant’s” rock-roof she per¬ 
formed a spell with snake-bones for his benefit. 

On reaching her home, where she found Sueela awaiting her, 
she reported that Cobby was truly ill: on which Sueela went 
back to the sigodhlo with a fixed lip, and in the deep night¬ 
time, seated naked on her bed with hugged knees, while the 
Queen paced the hut in a glum light, she ventured to break a 
silence with the statement: “Cobby very sick.” 

“How you know?” asked Spiciewegiehotiu, half-halting in 
her walking. 

“My mother been to see him.” 

Spiciewegiehotiu span sharply to say: “What for? Tell 
Mandaganya mind her own business!” 

“My goodness! he sick! You not care?” 

“No! Me not care! Tell everybody mind their own busi¬ 
ness!” 

“All right. But if a cow sick, they give it medicine. Some¬ 
times of a morning ten or twelve people used to wait for him at 
the sigodhlo gate, and he give them medicine; but when 
he sick, in prison, nobody give him medicine. . . . Suppose 
he—die ” 

“Let him die,” said the Queen, with a vixen vindictiveness 
and fixity of lip. 

Sueela cut a nod of menace. “Maybe he do; you better be 
careful!” 

“Oh, he not going to die!”—Spiciewegiehotiu laughed a 
little. 

“How you know? The Zulu, Panda, die there. Maybe he 
die, then—what? No more Cobby: the doves stop cooing, the 
winds stop blowing: you know you love him to your heart, 
Spiciewegiehotiu. And why you keep him there? Dzinikulu 
gone now: Cobby never again can attempt to take you away 



178 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

—he got no friends, no help. You say you always have rea¬ 
sons: so why you keep him there? You bring him out to¬ 
morrow, no?” 

At which Spiciewegiehotiu flew into a passion, crying out: 
“Now, isn’t this too much? Don’t ask me again!—never. 
You think me going to give reasons?” 

“Me done,” Sueela sullenly muttered, and shut up with re¬ 
sentment. 

But the next day Cobby’s medicine-chest was sought for; 
on the next he got it; close upon which followed fruit brought 
him by Macray, who stooped into the room, saying: “What, 
baas, in again, you jail-bird? How long you in for this 
stretch ? ” 

At once Cobby wished to know how it was that Macray, 
when sent for after the kidnapping, had failed to join Dzini- 
kulu and him! To which Macray answered: “Didn’t know 
I was sent for—nobody came. If any one had, I shouldn’t 
have gone. No ‘Elephantiasis’ for me, baas, thanks. I 
warned that fool of a Dzinikulu that he’d get his head off sure, 
and I warned you. I think you might follow my advice a 
little, inkoos: I know my way about. ... I hear you got 
wounded?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, it’s all to the good—the whole incident. You now 
see definitely that you can’t carry off the girl, and she sees 
that she had better send you away. We are to be ‘banished,’ 
as they say, though—why is the girl waiting? For you to get 
better, or what? I went to ask her, and she wouldn’t see me 
—damn her I hate the white nigger like poison. She had 
better be quick, for my cigars are nearly done, and when they 
are, I start kicking, I, make some sort of a bust-up somehow. 
I can’t smoke this Wo-Ngwanya tobacco, and I’m not going to 
be done out of smoking for anybody. When I’m really hurt, 
I kick—I tell you frankly—I make a bust-up. So hurry up, 
baas! get well. Then we do a dart, you and I, and old Sue, 
and the waggons. Sue’s mine now, you know, though she 


SUEELA WASHED WHITE 179 

don’t quite realize it yet. She and I plighted our troth in the 
canes one night-” 

Cobby moaned, Macray’s presence proving an added arrow 
in the quiverful of quinine-and-fever arrows whizzing here and 
there within his brain. Great, however, is quinine; so that a 
week after he was on his legs, weak and wrecked, but pacing; 
and that day yet a visitor stooped for him into the room—a 
very young officer apparently, erect and gallant as a mas¬ 
querade in cock’s-tail and ox-tail and kaross of ocelot-pelt, 
carrying the long assegai and shield, whom Cobby did not 
recognize in that vague sheen of his torch. 

“Well?” he asked when they were alone: “who-?” 

She shrank aghast at his haggardness, breathing: “My 
goodness! you so sick?” 

“Sueela?” 

“Eheh. Why you not lying down? My God, you very 
sick.” 

“Only very weak now. You come to See me! Secretly?” 

“Eheh. Me dead, if anybody know. Me can’t help- 

Oh, why you so sick?” Now her face muscles convulsed to¬ 
wards tears. 

“You dear!” said Cobby, with water in his eyes: “come to 
see me? You dear!” 

“You think me could help?”—in a hoarse tone in her throat, 
her face averted: “you think me not love you?” 

Swaying with weakness, he went to take her hand, and gaze 
contemplatively down upon her, saying: “Sueela, do you 
love me?” 

On which she was passionately on her knees to him, smooth¬ 
ing his hands down and down, her fingers stretched tense, say¬ 
ing: “Oh, me love you too much—only me know. ... Me 
going to beg you to give me three kisses—not now—some time 
—me steal them from Spiciewegiehotiu- You will, no?” 

“Poor dear. Yes, yes, of course.” 

“You so good, so great. Only three—then all my life me 
not care what happen to me, me say ‘he kiss me three times.’ 






180 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Not all the same day—one one day—then the next another 
day—then the last, last one another day. Spiciewegiehotiu 
not know: when me dying—my mother say me born to die 
young—when me dying me tell Spiciewegiehotiu ‘he kiss me 
three times,’ and she forgive me. But before you kiss me, me 
tell you something—who me to tell it to but you? me not good 
—me go somewhere with Caray, once, and with others before: 
me shamed! Now me done, done: that never happen to me 
any more. So you forgive me, no?” 

“Yes! Yes!” Cobby answered with nods, “till seventy 
times, dear,” and lifting her up, kissed her cheek. 

“That not one of the three!” she cried out, pleased, all shy 
eye-corners, leering. 

“No, no, that’s not one,” he consented. 

Then she said: “Now me make you lie down, and give you 
sorrel-drink”—she had gourd and cup—“and me get you out 
of this stinking den this day; if me not get you out, me tear 
myself to pieces”—an undertaking which, by an exhibition of 
no little cunning and skill, she fulfilled: for, on going from 
“The Elephant,” and on changing into her girl’s dress in the 
grounds of a girl friend, she hurried to Mandaganya, into 
whose presence she burst with a theatrical abandonment of 
despair, crying out: “Cobby dying!” 

“How you know?” breathed the sybil. 

Sueela poured out the falsehood that one of the warders 
had informed his daughter of it, and, “Oh, Ma-Sueela, quick!” 
she pleaded: “you go to Spiciewegiehotiu, no? Say He die! 
Say The dog yowl! Say Bring him out this day!” 

Meditatively the doctoress eyed her, remarking: “Me think 
you lying.” 

“Oh, Ma-Sueela, you stop to think?” asked the excellent 
girl with reproach: “go! go now !”—and before long the doc¬ 
toress was off to do it. 

Through which it happened that before sunset Cobby lay 
stretched in his lounge-chair in his old “guest-hut” in the 
sigodhlo, his old attendants about him. His enfeeblement be- 


SUEELA WASHED WHITE 


181 


ing extreme, anon he dozed, and anon tore his eyes open to 
see the lights flicker at wind, and listen awhile to raids of rain 
on the door, and doze anew; until a little sound like an “Oh!” 
of shock roused him, and he saw Spiciewegiehotiu within the 
doorway shrinking with astonishment and shock at the sight of 
him lying there so washed-out, so languid, ensanguined; then 
she ran to him, and knelt with her arm round him, speechless, 
her cheek on his; and when he felt the streaming of her tears 
that wet his cheek, he himself wept plenteously, and, without 
saying anything, they wept so together, till she got out on the 
sound of a sob in a broken voice: “So you get well, no? now 
me near you. And now you do everything me tell you, no?” 

“Yes,” he answered on a sob, “and you everything that I 
tell you.” 


XXIII 


SUEELA CHANGING SIDES 

N OW, the liberation of Cobby and his reinstatement in 
the sigodhlo astonished everybody: but upon Macray it 
had a profound effect, the bitter suspicion now visit¬ 
ing him that there must be something sweet between Cobby and 
the Queen: in which case—what? Cobby might yet get her 
to Europe! and all Macray’s fat be in the fire. If Cobby did 
not get her, she would keep Cobby, and, with Cobby, Macray. 
But Macray’s cigars were smoked—an important fact; and 
weary now in general of Wo-Ngwanya, especially since Sueela 
had “turned good,” he was urgent to return to Europe. 

Three evenings after Cobby’s release he went to visit Cobby, 
to discover what was what, and come to some decision. 

But outside Cobby’s door he heard a murmur of voices in 
the hut, and, peeping at a seam between the door-boards, could 
see Cobby in candle-light on his lounge-chair, and, kneeling 
near Cobby, a young officer, whose posture of body and mind, 
whose face of affection, whose play of eye and hand, were 
hardly those of a young officer; and before long Macray was 
saying to himself: “Oh, it’s she —the two beasts.” 

This scene had the effect of a profound upheaval in the soul 
of Macray: accustomed to be deified and preferred, to consider 
the sun and the earth his, he was churned in his depths to a 
turgidness of jealousy, a venom of enmity. 

Not a word of the murmuring could he make out, but there 
he remained, smiling over a viper’s-nest of emotions. 

Sueela had started at a little sound of his step on the moss 
outside, had sharply breathed “What that?” and, though 
Cobby had heard nothing, she had continued to hearken, 

182 


183 


SUEELA CHANGING SIDES 

hushed, eyeing the silence, then had remarked: “Oh, it very 
dangerous! Suppose-!” 

“Better not come again, then,” he said. “But I am glad 
you came, for I wanted to put to you this that X have been 
saying. Spiciewegiehotiu has afresh betrayed to me, not only 
that she will never go with me, but that she has no intention 
that I shall ever go, this talk of ‘banishing’ me being mere talk 
for some reason of her own. So here am I condemned to 
life-long idleness and ripening. Of course, I can escape to¬ 
morrow: I can go through the air; but then I should be leaving 
Macray behind, and that I mustn’t do.” 

Sueela’s expression was all perplexity. “How you mean— 
‘go through the air’?” 

“I can fly.” 

“Fly. . . . Up in the air? Like a devil?” 

“Or like an angel. But whatever I do, whether I stay, or 
whether I go, I shall be in equal misery, if I go without Spicie¬ 
wegiehotiu, who is half of me, and where she is not I am a 
fish out of water. And what I do not understand is that you , 
who love her so much, and love me, too, should be opposed to 
her going with me. I can only suppose that you don’t con¬ 
ceive how much this would be for her good- What are 

you staring at, black goose?” 

“How you mean ‘fly’? Not up in the—air?” 

“Yes, I tell you. You must understand that animals with 
two legs, men and birds, are meant, not only to fly, but, sooner 
or later, to spend their life in the air, spurning the earth. 
And when I tell you that Europeans can already fly, and when 
you see how very far Africans are from doing any such thing, 
do you not see, too, that that is not true friendship to Spicie¬ 
wegiehotiu to be on her side in her refusal to come to Europe, 
where, being opulent, she would enjoy far vaster powers and 
delights, and be like a lark let out of a cage?” 

She stared at him. “What you want me to do?” 

“Nothing, dear,” he said: “only to be on my side in sym¬ 
pathy, as you should be, for her sake, and mine, too.” 




184 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“My mother!” she suddenly breathed, astare; then shut her 
eyes, shook her face: “if she go, me dead, me done. Without 
Spiciewegiehotiu me a rotting dog on the ground.” 

“You would come, too,” he muttered. 

“Me?” 

“Why, yes.” 

Her mouth half-opened in a sort of laugh like one aston¬ 
ished with happiness; but then, recovering herself, she shook 
her head, saying, “No, you not want me then. No. Me not 
go. Me stay and die.” 

“Perhaps I should not now go without you,” he mentioned. 

“No? Oh, you good!”—she drew her stretched fingers 
down his cheek; and outside Macray hissed at her. 

“But,” she said presently, “why you not tell Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu that, if she go with you, she like a lark let out of a cage? 
Maybe . . .” 

“Haven’t I told her?” Cobby answered: “the girl’s deafer 
than the deaf adder.” 

“She not realize. . . . Even me who believe everything you 

say- Why you not show her the different things you can 

do? Then, when she sees for herself, maybe-” 

This struck Cobby. “Well, there may be something in that. 
Yes, I will think of that.” 

She then, after gazing a little at his face in a stillness, stood 
up from her knees, saying: “Now me go. You soon get well, 
no?” 

He promised “Yes,” with nods, looking up at her. 

“If ever you want to see me, tell Sansiwana to whistle twice 
at noon at the back part of the park.” 

“Very good.” 

“So good health. Who love you?” 

“You. Think over what I’ve said.” 

“Eheh, me think.” She pressed his hand in a vice. “Good 
health.” 

She still did not go, but stood averted, a pallor now under 
her skin; and then ventured upon the murmur in a tone of huff 



185 


SUEELA CHANGING SIDES 

and offence: “Me have the first of the three kisses now, no?” 

“Come, dear, come,” he said, his face uplifted to her. 

In a moment she was down to him, and, her palms holding 
his face, her lids closed, laid her lips on his brow, led them 
muttering down, found out his mouth with a pounce of passion 
bound back by chastity, and suddenly sprang and ran to the 
door to vanish. 

Headlong she went, seeing nothing, though Macray had only 
a little withdrawn himself from the door; but soon she paused, 
stood a stone, hearing rather than seeing him pursuing her 
down the gross gloom under the meeting of the trees of the 
avenue. 

He gripped her wrist. “Got you! You obscene little 
beast.” His eyes blazed outrageous fire upon her; he deluged 
her in a fury of abuse. “You dugout, you gluttonous gutter, 
you ogling lewd goat! How many different men a day for 
you, eh? Your blackness is the blackness of sin, they say you 
were black with sin at seven, you deep-dyed-” 

“What me done?” she asked pallid, yet with a quiet dignity. 

He let go her wrist to box her staggering. “Think I didn’t 
see? You filthy- Come on, into the bush.” 

Again he gripped her wrist, and her face had a momentary 
horror of repulsion, till she quietly announced: “Me not 
going.” 

“Ah!—you dare. Resist one little bit, and tomorrow 
Spiciewegiehotiu hears all.” 

A heat of enmity, as of braziers dully smouldering, reddened 
the veins of her eyeballs. “Yes, you get me into trouble if you 
tell,” she said, “but you never get anybody else: the same 
day Spiciewegiehotiu have you dead. She not have any fear 
of Cobby carrying her off now Dzinikulu dead: so she not need 
you any longer.” 

“I see: I’ll remember,” he said to himself with a sinister 
meaning, adding: “Come on”—and dragged her stumbling. 

“Where you taking me to?” she asked. 

“Up here”—at the entrance to an alley. 




186 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


“No, not there,” she said: “a hut up there—somebody come 
out and see. That other side.” 

Now she led his hold on her wrist obliquely across the 
avenue toward a spot where she was conscious that a tree- 
stump stood half-buried in the moss; and since it was dark all 
there, his foot stumbled upon the stump; and, as he stumbled, 
Sueela by a feat of nimbleness was running free. 

After her he dashed in a passion of action—down the avenue, 
then a dart to the left round the royal park over noiseless 
moss under darkness of foliage, through which, anon the moon 
threw moving pictures that winced and wandered. But though 
his legs were longer, Sueela’s were fleeter, and she had left 
him well behind by the time she dashed to the park gate to 
gasp with wild eyes to the guard, “Me—Sueela”—she had 
snatched off her officer’s headdress—“kill that wild beast—he 
chase me.” 

On which two of them went headlong, with spears held 
ready, to meet Macray, while he, seeing them, whipped out his 
pistol to lay them dead. But his angel whispered him of 
danger there: and since there was still time for flight, he fled, 
was soon in hiding in bush, spied them dash past him, and 
before long got to harbour in Cobby’s hut. 

Sueela, meantime, was modifying her dress in an empty 
hut within the royal grounds; and, on going home, told Spicie- 
wegiehotiu that Macray had met and chased her. 

And Spiciewegiehotiu said: “So?” 


XXIV 


COBBY’S “BANQUET” 

S UEELA had no sooner left Cobby’s hut, than Cobby, 
pondering upon her suggestion to show to Spiciewegie- 
hotiu “the different things he could do,” conceived the 
scheme of giving a big dinner, to exhibit to the Queen in what 
style she would dine at the Ritz and in the Riviera. 

And when Macray, after being pursued by the two guards¬ 
men, came in to him, Cobby asked what Macray thought of this 
concept. 

“Splendid!” went Macray with an evil sneer: “but—I 
thought we were to be ‘banished’?” 

“No, it won’t be done,” Cobby answered. 

“How do you know?” 

Cobby shrugged. “Somehow.” 

“Then, let’s do a bunk.” 

“We can’t cross nine hundred miles of Africa without bag 
or baggage; and, if we have impedimenta, pursuit must mean 
capture.” 

“Why, though, should we be pursued?” 

Again Cobby shrugged. “We should be.” 

On which Macray said to himself, “There is something sweet, 
then, between her and him”; and very irritably he demanded: 
“But when is this to end? Look here, j’ai soupe —or ‘fed up,’ 
you say in England—I’m fed up, I tell you frankly. I have 
nothing to smoke, man—I’m like a beggar that says ‘can you 
give me a pipe of ’baccie, mister?’ ” 

“Well, one must bear the inevitable,” Cobby mentioned. 
“Or blast it sky-high out of one’s way,” Macray muttered, 

187 


188 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“No, not the inevitable,” Cobby said: “you can damn it, 
but you can’t blast it.” 

“No laughing matter to me!” 

“Nor to me.” 

“Well, I’ll think it all out,” Macray said, strolling out. 

And he proceeded to think in no good easy mood, but with 
his usual intolerance of obstacles to his wants. 

“Thinking it out,” he was lying the next forenoon within 
thicket up White River on an ant-heap where he had acquired 
the habit of hiding himself away, to lie in wait and eye the 
bathing of the Queen and her bevy, the ant-heap, as usual, 
being an even lusher jungle of fan-palms, mimosas, proteas 
white-flowering, than the wild round it. He was feeling a need 
to see Sueela, who, now that he hissed at her, the more teas- 
ingly allured him; and there, deeply concealed, he lay when 
the Queen’s ladies appeared. 

They ran, they prattled, they laughed, they splashed, they 
took the douche under the waterfalls; then were back, drying, 
dressing; then Sueela was climbing a marula-tree, with Spicie- 
wegiehotiu underneath looking up, a marula some way from 
the troop of damsels, and hardly ten yards from the ant-heap. 

Sueela picked and dropped peaches to Spiciewegiehotiu, 
then, seated on a low branch of the marula, chewing its 
peaches, spoke downward in a raised tone, continuing a previ¬ 
ous conversation—about Macray. “You not need him any 
more. Why you bear with that man?” 

Dreading the opening of Macray’s mouth any day, dreading 
lest his violence should contrive to coerce her converted nerves 
into a sin against her nobler love, she did not now wish well 
to the continuance of his existence, and was bitter, too, against 
him for his hooligan usage of her. “He steal your father’s 
picture, he use your father’s goods, he hate you, he Cobby’s 
enemy, he lead three girls astray, he want to lead me, he chase 
me- Why you not cut him short? Me hate that man.” 

Spiciewegiehotiu shrugged. “If you like . . . maybe . . . 
But look at those clouds scudding—the sky wide—water sweet, 


189 


COBBY’S “BANQUET” 

wind sweet—hear the river and the trees streaming—me like 
everybody to see and hear them, unless somebody’s death do 
good to other people. Me have a score to settle with Caray, 
but there is something to his credit in it; maybe, but for him, 
Cobby and Dzinikulu-” 

“He do it for his own good, not for yours!”—Sueela was 
leaping down. 

“Me know. Well, maybe . . .” They were walking away: 
Macray lost the rest. 

They left him there a devil, with a thought in him of Cobby’s 
feast, and of how he might make a clean sweep then of all 
that impeded and hated him, to be off for civilization. He 
had not interfered with anybody, he said to himself—had been 
interfered with in his peaceable routine, first by that Master 
R. K. Rolls, who was well in hell, and then by that Master 
Cobby, and now by this black beast whom he had deigned to 
feel tender to, and this white nigger who so lightly doomed 
him to death for doing nothing. Or not for doing nothing? 
The theft of the photograph . . . she knew of that . . . knew 
the motive. . . . “All right,” he said, “war it is: the quickest 
lives. I do the killing, I think: no one wounds me with 
impunity. . . .” 

Three days later he received a summons to go to Cobby, a 
propos of the preparations for the feast, Cobby having already 
sent out cards of invitation to the elect—the bearer of the card 
telling what the card intended to say: for everything was to be 
in high style! and no little sensation and expectation was in 
the air at this event—a feast in “The Elephant”! one had never 
heard the like. 

One there was who eyed the thing askance—Mandaganya; 
and she went to Spiciewegiehotiu to say: “What this ‘feast’ 
for? You go?” 

“Eheh.” 

Mandaganya laid her hand on the Queen’s. “Don’t go.” 

“Oh, Ma-Sueela,” pouted Sueela, who was there within the 
baobab, “this is too much!” 


190 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


To which the doctoress quietly replied: “If you talk when 
me talking, me knock you down.” And to Spiciewegiehotiu: 
“Don’t go. Something bad going to happen. Me not hate 
Sir Cobby, but me dread him. He very wise; he make people 
sleep so deep, he cut off their leg, and they not know. Sup¬ 
pose he poison us all at the feast, or maybe carry you off 
asleep?” 

Spiciewegiehotiu started! 

“He not do that,” Sueela remarked. 

“Shut your box,” the sybil answered; and, smoothing the 
Queen’s hand: “Don’t go. Listen, me tell you something: 
this morning me was picking herbs in the hills, and all at once 
this little dog run back to me with his tail between his legs. 
Me say to him: ‘What the matter with you, Ronja?’ He not 
make any answer, but when me say to him ‘Come on,’ he not 
come. ‘Why you not come?’ me ask him. No answer. There 
he sit; twice me see a shiver twitch him. And all at once a 
rock come clattering down from the cliff upon the path ahead: 
if we had gone on, we get killed, maybe; then when the rock 
drop, he come on. So me think to myself: ‘these must be days 
of danger, this month-end,’ and when we get home, me show 
him the card Sir Cobby send when he send the invitation. 
Ronja look at the card, he not say anything for a minute, then 
he sniff at it, then he back from it, and snarl. Don’t go.” 

The two girls sat rather aghast. 

“You go?” asked Mandaganya. 

“Me go,” said Sueela. 

“And me,” said Spiciewegiehotiu. 

“Then, me, too”—the sybil rose, a grand being, to go back¬ 
wards out, grovelling to the ground. 


XXV 


THE ENTREE 



BOUT that same evening hour Macray, summoned, was 


in the sigodhlo, all in good-temper now outside, say- 


JL m. * n g : “Well, baas, what about this precious banquet of 
Belshazzar? Who’s to be the chef?" 

Cobby answered: “You and I ( mainly. But the point is 
not the feast itself—these people here eat nicer things than 
rich Englishmen, and have those things much more lavishly 
than non-rich Englishmen—the point is the scientific accom¬ 
paniments of the feast, the elegance and dignity which Science 
gives to life—the blaze of light—the music-” 

“But stop—where this blaze of light coming from?” 

“Well, but, isn’t there the oil-engine, the dynamo, and our 
forty accumulators? Only I’m not sure how the rock holds 
nails!—we must drive in plugs of hardwood, I think. I’m 
having two arc-lamps in parallel, getting our six hundred 
watts from thirty accumulators, and the glow-lamps we’ll rig 
in a series system with the dynamo and ten accumulators, using 
every watt of our power. The lamp-glasses are mostly col¬ 
oured—I gjot them so with this very object, to dazzle in case 
of necessity: it will he useless if we do not look elfin and 
superhuman.” 

“I see, I see. Oh, we are being vain, baas of me! we are 
out to capture the ladies’ eyes. But why ‘The Ele¬ 
phant’-?” 

“Well, but,” Cobby said, “we can’t put the Ritz into a hut. 
That ‘Elephant’ rock-hall a mile beyond the prison—that’s the 
one I’ve selected: it has an alcove in which we can put our 


191 


192 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


Primus and two stoves. The main bother is the table! and a 
chic table-cloth—and we have only ten days: must start making 
trestles-” 

“And as to chairs?” Macray suggested. 

“Oh, well, we must use stools.” 

“They don’t have stools in the Ritz, isinduna—only foot¬ 
stools. These varnished stools here—when you get up off 
them they, too, get up a little, until they decide to part from 
you. and drop with a crash.” 

“We’ll dry-dust ours.” 

“And plates of unglazed earthenware-” 

“Oh, we have plates enough of our own—only eight guests.” 

“Not enough forks, though.” 

“Eat with fingers. It is only lately that the kings of Eng¬ 
land have forks: the Stuarts ate with their fingers.” 

Macray rose to stroll out, saying: “Oh, well, God’s will be 
done, boys.” 

“Come early tomorrow!” Cobby called. 

“Damn you,” Macray muttered, stooping out through the 
hut-opening into darkness. 

From the avenue he walked aside to the waggons to shed 
electric torch-light upon the medicine-chest, from which he 
took strychnine; and he had that day pressed out some milk- 
juice of euphorbia, a baleful bane, to mix with strychnine, in 
order to complicate and obscure the symptoms of both. 

The next days were spent in pretty strenuous labour by 
him and Cobby and some blacks who aided them, for it was a 
long row or wade to the rock-hall, whichever way one ap¬ 
proached it; and in the end the feast had to be put off three 
days. 

On the last afternoon Cobby’s home-coming was watched 
for at the sigodhlo gate, whence he was conducted into the 
Queen’s hut, who, seated on the floor with Sueela, said to him: 
“They say you going to poison me, or put me to sleep.” 

“Do they?” says he: “but is this what you had to say? I 
am occuupied!” 




THE ENTREE 193 

“Me been poisoned once,” she said: “me not go: me 
’fraid.” 

“As you please.” 

On which Sueela, shaking her head earnestly upward at him, 
said: “She not mean it, she not ’fraid.” 

“Yes, me ’fraid,” repeated the Queen: “Mandaganya’s little 
dog snarl at that card you send.” 

“Ha! ha! ha!” 

“Oh, Spiciewegiehotiu,” muttered Sueela with reproach in a 
pain of shamefacedness; and to Cobby: “She not mean it, me 
tell you! Go: you busy. We come tonight.” 

“May I go?” demanded Cobby. 

“If you poison me, me haunt you,” answered Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu. 

“You haunt me now.” 

“Cousin Cobby. Red-head.” 

“Good-bye. Good-bye, Sueela. Start just at sunset.” He 
was gone. 

An hour later came from him to them garlands: and, gar¬ 
landed, with Mandaganya and the Queen-dowager garlanded, 
and half a battalion of garde# cavaleries, they started out, 
cantering down a square where, though it was raining, crowds 
had foregathered to gape and gaze. 

Then at the “Elephant’s” edge they found a punt all en fete 
with flowers, surmounted with an arch, out of whose leafage 
shot the sheen of three electric torches; this with the ladies in 
it was drawn forward by men wading; and, wading in the 
rear, stooping anon under the rock-roof, came the troop of 
soldiers, whom, with her usual prudence, Spiciewegiehotiu 
took with her. 

But it was no short voyage under there in the dark, and 
Mandaganya muttered to the Queen-dowager: “Never in my 
life me go so far to get something to eat.” If any one spoke, 
it was in a mutter, for there was that in the mood of the place 
that disposed the soul to a musing in unison with that moodi¬ 
ness of the lagoon, which the waders’ progress noiselessly 


194 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

wrinkled in coils of ripples sluggish like oil-waves waving 
loth, only less loth than the areas of lotus, arum, mosses, whose 
old opium repose the roamers’ motion anon broke or troubled; 
and languidly the back gave way as beneath the weight of the 
leagues of incubus, and into the gaze came a dreaming; until, 
after passing the region of the prison, they began to encounter 
anon a glow-lamp or two, hung from the rock-roof, gloating 
upon the water’s gloom, mute warders, unaccountable, like 
outposts of gnomeland: and now they were roused to outlook. 

Then an opening in the rock-roof lit up: and they made 
their way up a tunnel rugged under the glare of rare glow- 
lamps. Here the Queen posted her guard; and the four ladies 
and the dog clambered on, till they got to a great rock-portal: 
and there at once an “Oh!” of astonishment, of awe, broke 
from their breasts at a scene of majesty which would have 
abashed Caesar—nay, Hume, Cuvier. 

There at the portal stood Cobby and Macray, excellently 
dressed in jackets and cravats, to shake hands with bows of 
state; and down under two triumphal arches gala with flowers 
and coloured glamours of glow-lamps, to the accompaniment 
of a most glorious music going on somewhere, they moved in a 
mood of Aladdin to a table gala with flowers and coloured 
glamours; and flowers in showers, and festoons of coloured 
glamours, were looped all about the walls of the hall, and 
above, shimmering, showering a chattering as of ravishment, 
the richer flush of arc-lamps. 

It was a night of lights and sights. Cobby, seeing the depth 
of the effect created, sat pleased at the right hand of the 
Queen, she seated at the table-head, her back to the alcove, 
behind the curtain of which could be heard the dynamo’s 
murmur, the oil-engine noising. The only failure was con¬ 
versation, all sat so lost in stillness and stiffness. When soup 
was being eaten, Spiciewegiehotiu whispered low to Sueela: 
“It good—but he not give much!” and low Sueela whispered 
back: “Me think more coming.” And this was so: many 
mickles, making a muckle, the liquors, too, being numerous, 


THE ENTRE'E 195 

port, sherry, cherry-brandy, each in its season for a reason: at 
which warmth the ice thawed in time, and there was talk and 
lightness of mind, at the Queen’s left being seated Sueela, 
Mandaganya, then on his own stool the dog Ronja, paw on 
table, feasting, then the Queen-dowager; and on the Queen’s 
right the General, the Chief-of-the-tax, and two quite humble 
men, smiths, whom Cobby liked (and of one of them, named 
Rambya, had an even extremely high opinion), besides Cobby 
and Macray, one or other of whom anon sped away into the 
alcove to see to this or that. 

In the midst of which Cobby extended his hand to a box on 
the table, and immediately all the genii of astonishment were 
called and flocked. Behold now: a disc on top of the box be¬ 
gins to spin, and—by the grace of God!—out of it sounds 
“Woman is Fickle” from Rigoletto. Then those there knew 
music more teeming with some mood and meaning of the 
spheres than the strains of canaries, as much more teeming 
as the smart and burden of the psalm which may one day burst 
from earth to star will be vaster than our sonatas. And—Oh, 
joy!—see now how they move to the news that the Soul of 
Being is bliss and emotion of gavotte, jig, jazz, finger wagging, 
hand clapping, head wagging, body going, He dancing, they 
dancing, sons of His soul, remembering how that same melody 
and meaning was inherent in the Nebula in the era when He 
and they reeled red, the little hound, too, with yowling mouth, 
snout up, hailing Him that moves and makes. 

“It come out of that box!” Spiciewegiehotiu definitely dis¬ 
covered. 

“Something inside the box!” sang out Sueela. 

And this was so. . . . 

After which yet another lunacy of astonishment ensued 
when, by just a touch of two switches, Cobby extinguished all 
that effulgence at once, causing all to jump up, then sum¬ 
moned it afresh with a touch: and it came. 

But this was just before an entree of stewed koodookid: 
and with that entree the banquet came upon wreck. 


196 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

The attendants placed the ten plates in their places on the 
table: but Macray was away in the alcove. 

Now, Mandaganya had arranged with Spiciewegiehotiu, and 
with all the blacks, except the two smiths, that nothing was 
to be tasted until tasted by her Ronja and by her; and at the 
entree the little dog growled, and bristled, and would not taste: 
upon which the doctoress sprang upright, and, striking the 
table with her fist, glared close across into Cobby’s face, 
crying aloud: “Me say this food poisoned!” 

White sprang Spiciewegiehotiu, staring at Cobby; all went 
pale: only Cobby looked calm—glanced up to say to Man¬ 
daganya: “You might calm yourself: your statement is fan¬ 
tastic”—and went on eating. 

A muteness of the tomb now: broken only by that chatter¬ 
ing of the arc-lamps’ flush, the armature’s mutter and medita¬ 
tion spinning in the inner apartment. Cobby ate on, offended 
—no one else: for the smiths, who had commenced to eat, 
had ceased. And suddenly, after perhaps half a minute, 
Spiciewegiehotiu dashed Cobby’s plate off the table. 

“Now, how absurd!” Cobby murmured, starting up. 

At the same time the Queen on her feet said to a waiter: 
“Tell Sir Caray come to me.” 

But Macray was already outside the alcove, and in a mo¬ 
ment was at her right hand beside Cobby. 

“What you doing in there?” she asked him. 

Smiling, just touched with pallor, he answered: “Seeing 
to things.” 

“But your food getting cold.” She indicated his plate. 
“Sit and eat.” 

Their eyes met and lingered a little together, until, with 
a chuckle, he said: “What, does the Great-great want me to 
be poisoned? I heard an outcry about poison. ... You 
eaten any, baas?” 

Cobby nodded. 

“Is it all right?” 

“Yes, of course.” 


THE ENTREE 


197 


“Then, what caused the outcry?” 

“The dog, apparently, didn’t approve-” 

“The dog! Oh, I see. . . . Yes, that little beast, I know 
him—greatest charlatan and liar on earth—pretends he can 
see through a stone-wall. . . 

“So you see,” Spiciewegiehotiu now said, “it not poisoned. 
You sit and eat, no?” 

“Yes,” said Macray, “let us all eat.” 

And again her eyes and his lingered together. 

She said: “Me done; me not want any more.” 

“Nor I, for that matter,” he mentioned. 

“No? Oh, well. Go back to what you were doing.” 

On which, uttering a breath of laughter, he walked away 
back into the alcove, and she, as he vanished, took up a little 
goblet, threw some flowers out of it, put into it with a spoon 
all the stew that was on her plate, and placed it under the 
table. 

There the feast, as a feast, came to an end: nothing that 
Cobby could say could induce to any more eating—he grieving 
at no sweets, no coffee, liqueur; but cigarettes were smoked; 
the conversazione went on; telephone-sets had been installed 
at opposite ends of the hall, and all spoke in hushed tones 
to one another across all that stretch; they sat amazed at a 
display of coloured flames, Roman candles, squibs, catherine- 
wheels, fickle crackers frisking; and it was late when, laden 
with presents, the Queen went away, taking secretly with her 
beneath her kaross the goblet of entree. 

All in a dream of midsummer night their minds reeled, 
and “There is only Cobby,” Spiciewegiehotiu muttered, mov¬ 
ing homeward in the punt under the rock-roof. As when a 
young girl goes home dumb from her first opera, agaze at 
apocalypses of fairyland through all the organs of her fancy, 
and all is trance of novelty, of freshness and strangeness, 
and in all her posture and prospect revolution ensues: so were 
they; or as when America was discovered, a “new world,” 
and away in a whirl the imaginations of men went ranging 


198 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


in revels of reverie through realms of refreshment and festival, 
and a revolution ensued; or as when one dared to bore the 
aerial blue in a balloon, fairly rose and soared, ascending 
up into heaven, at last, in reality, the son of man before the 
beholding host of man, and all was renewed and broader and 
tall, and a revolution has ensued; or as when one flew, and 
a revolution has ensued, and will soon ensue, behind every 
revolution a scientist, the breadth and boldness of some lone 
brow becrowned with thorns of thought: so with these mov¬ 
ing bemused beneath that roof through dreamland. But by 
then the revealer of the dreamland, though he said nothing, 
was convulsed, in dreadful pain. 


XXVI 


SUEELA SCHEMES 

T HE sickness of Cobby and of one of the smiths (Ram- 
bya) could not be concealed. They were poisoned: 
but the diagnosis baffled Cobby, some of the symptoms 
being strychnine symptoms, some euphorbia symptoms, all ob¬ 
scurely mixed up. 

To see the smith the Queen went a long way, and said to 
him: “Me know who poison you: you think me not avenge 
you?” 

“Who poison me, Bayete?” Rambya asked. 

“Me not come to answer questions,” she answered, “me 
come to see you. Now you soon get well, no? Good health!” 

Meantime, she had put a bung into that little goblet of 
stew abstracted from the banquet, and had buried it in her 
grounds; meantime, too, the rumour of it flew wide: one or 
other of the white men had done this thing—maybe both, 
Cobby being taken in his own snare. . . . 

And no vengeance taken! Sueela especially now expected 
the Queen to proceed immediately against Macray, but the 
Queen said, did, nothing; and the Queen now expected Sueela 
to be pressing afresh for proceedings against Macray, but 
Sueela said nothing—each for her own reasons. . . . 

In the case of Spiciewegiehotiu, the banquet had afresh 
alarmed and put her on guard against Cobby, she scenting 
Cobby’s object in going to so much trouble—to show her the 
glories of Europe, and allure her to trek that way. Cobby, 
then, was not done with thoughts of being off with her! And 
since, obviously now, Cobby had powers of which she knew 

199 


200 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

nothing, and since Macray was one of her protections against 
Cobby, Macray was afresh precious to her. 

In the case of Sueela, whom the majesties of the banquet 
had ranged quite definitely on the side of Cobby’s desires 
as against the Queen’s desires, she had conceived a scheme 
in which Macray would have to play a part, so did not at 
present desire Macray to die. Moreover, after the banquet, 
Cobby’s statement had become more credible to her—that 
Cobby could go away “through the air” like a devil (or an 
angel), but never would go without Macray: so she now 
dreaded that, if Macray perished, Cobby any day might shake 
the dust of Wo-Ngwanya off his shoe, and vanish into heaven. 
This, indeed, would leave to her her Spiciewegiehotiu, her 
other soul; but this girl had now determined that Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu should go with Cobby, for Spiciewegiehotiu’s sake, and 
for Cobby’s sake. 

“You not want me any more to ‘cut Caray short’?” 
Spiciewegiehotiu at last asked her one day, with meditative 
eyes dwelling on her. 

“Me ’fraaaid!” Sueela answered, very deceitfully, very 
deeply: “suppose Cobby still want to carry you off? Why 
he give that feast? Maybe Caray still useful. And me not 
think it was Caray who poisoned the food.” 

“No? Oh, you too foolish,” the Queen said, and said no 
more. 

By that time Sueela in a disguise had twice visited Cobby’s 
lounge-chair, to mourn each time to him: “My God, you 
just get well, and now you so sick again.” 

“I will recover,” he said; “and I bear it gladly, for now 
the Queen may be coming with me.” 

She shook her head. “No. Listen: the feast fail—it was 
my fault to tell you to give it: it only make her want you 
more to stay here. She say ‘If he can make those things, we 
can make them when he show us the way; see if we not make 
Wo-Ngwanya the wonder of the world.’ ” 

Thus the effect of the feast was the opposite of the effect 


SUEELA SCHEMES 


201 


intended by Cobby, Spiciewegiehotiu, like Pharaoh at the 
miracles of Moses, hardening her heart at the miracles of 
Cobby; and with the rising of the sun upon that night of the 
fairies, fairyland lost its glamours for her, and got to be a 
matter for practical politics, her enlarged soul now starting 
to dream dreams of a new Wo-Ngwanya, far lordier, intro¬ 
duced by Cobby; the mood of revolution took her: thoughts 
of war, of enormous dramas of transformation, of palms, 
campaigns, spectacles, splendours, Alexandrine transactions; 
and always she said to herself “war, girl, war, war.” This 
was to work and work in her. . . . 

“As the deaf adder stoppeth her ear,” Cobby muttered. . . . 

“She say she owe her life, she owe all, to the Wa- 
Ngwanya,” Sueela told him: “so she give herself to them.” 

“And f owe my life and all to Europe: I give myself to 
it. If she will not come, I will die rather than remain here. 
I will constantly try to escape, I will hate her bitterly, I will 
kick and bite and fight till I die. Tell her: I couldn’t speak 
to her yesterday, I was so ill. . . .” 

“You ill still!” 

“Yes: thank God that she or you got none of this bane that 
is in me into your blood. . . . How did it get into that stew? 
God knows!” 

On an impulse she whispered: “Caray do it.” 

“No, come, come,” he said peremptorily, “get that out of 
your head.” 

“He do it,” she quietly insisted: “he want to kill me be¬ 
cause me not go with him; he want to kill Spiciewegiehotiu 
and you because you keep him here; he not want to kill my 
mother and the others, but he so wicked, he not care-” 

“Be quiet, Sueela, you are displeasing me.” 

She smoothed his hands, put her cheek on them, and shut 
up, for, though she knew how easily she could convince him 
that Macray was his enemy by merely revealing to him how 
Macray had originally warned Spiciewegiehotiu of Cobby’s 
expedition, she was apprehensive that if Cobby got to know 



202 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

of this, he might go off lonely “through the air,” without 
Macray, without Spiciewegiehotiu. . . . 

“Me not think Caray much a friend to you,” she said pres¬ 
ently: “so promise you not tell Caray what me come to say 
to you.” 

“Very good. What have you come to say?” 

Smoothing his hands, on her knees, she told it: he and Ma¬ 
cray were to escape with a cart, she, Sueela, with them, and 
five fellows upon whose friendship for her she could rely; 
then when they had gone a little way, the Queen was to hear 
that they were away, that Macray had carried off Sueela: in 
which case, it was certain that the Queen would fly in person 
to find Sueela, taking with her probably only a small body 
of men, since the fugitives would be but few; and, as Sueela 
knew of a spot in a pass where a few in ambush might easily 
master many, there Cobby’s lot could kill the Queen’s men, 
seize the Queen, and be away with her, while Sueela went 
home to mourn. . . . 

Cobby held his chin, speculating. “Needn’t kill the 
Queen’s men,” he muttered, “ . . . tear-gas . . . and cap¬ 
ture. . . . Good, good.” 

“You think it good?” 

“Yes! We will! You—dear: both good and clever.” 

“But you look after me, no? You not let Caray get me 
while me with him?” 

“Indeed not! Be very sure of that.” 

“And you not let him know beforehand why we do it? 
If you do, we fail!—he tell the Queen. Caray not want you 
to carry her off! Me know, me tell you so, you believe me, 
no? So you take away his guns from him when the Queen 
coming, no? And you give me one of those little guns for 
myself. . . .” 

She then went away, but the next time she came to him had 
each detail of the scheme completely planned; and the fol¬ 
lowing night met Macray by appointment in her mother’s 
park. 


SUEELA SCHEMES 


203 


Macray, at this time in an ice of anxiety for his life, appre¬ 
hensive every day of what the Queen might mean toward him, 
and pining to be well out of Wo-Ngwanya, was torn betwixt 
delight and suspicion at what Sueela had to say: they were 
to escape! she with them, Sir Cobby to give her something 
to make the Queen sleep, and while the Queen slept, the cart 
and they would pass well away beyond capture. 

“So who is it that you are running away with—Cobby or 
me?” he demanded. 

Brazenly she smiled up into his face. ‘With you." 

“No lies! I saw you slobbering Cobby, you black Bac¬ 
chant.” 

“But you not see me go into the canes with him? My 
goodness, me not give you proof who me love?” 

This solaced, this mollified; but then he burst out: “Why, 
I heard you begging Spiciewegiehotiu up White River to mur¬ 
der me! I heard you!” 

“You heard?”—her hand on his shoulder, she smiling up 
close into his eyes. “You were there?—to see me bathe, 
no? Me have the best figure of all those girls, no? But 
you not guess why me beg Spiciewegiehotiu to kill you? She 
so suspicious: she think me love you; and me want to make 
her think me hate you: so me say ‘Kill him!’” 

He pondered upon it. “Was that it? Really? But if 
you love me so much, why did you kiss Cobby?” 

“But me love Sir Cobby, too: only different, not the same.” 

“I see. And why have you shunned me as you have?” 

Her eye-corners ogled him. “Because you not to touch 
me again, until you make me your waaif in that country.” 

“Oh, Lord, I see—question of matrimony: what will the 
parson think? You’re an unbeliever, my Sue. Never mind, 
I forgive you—come, kiss.” 

On which she drew a revolver from her moocha-girdle to 
present playfully at him, saying: “You see this little gun? 
Sir Cobby give me. If you touch me too soon, me shoooot 


204 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

But this did not deter, and when she saw him flush toward 
urgency, she took to her heels; nor could he come near to 
catching her. 

She had already explained to him what was his part in the 
plan of escape: he was to get the cart and oxen, keep them 
dark at his domicile, and stock the cart with guns and other 
requisites, got in very small lots from Cobby’s waggons. 

And this he did: daily entering the sigodhlo to get the 
things, and discuss with Cobby, whom he now found rather 
a cold baas, Sueela’s statements about him having left some 
impression on Cobby: and it reached the ears of Spiciewegie- 
hotiu that Sir Caray was often at this time in the sigodhlo— 
a bit of gossip that caused the Queen’s eyebrows to rise a 
little. 

And the Queen’s eyebrows could not but rise a little at 
Sueela, who was sleeping unquietly, who was hanging to 
Spiciewegiehotiu’s hand with a fresh anguish of friendship, 
gushings of love. One midnight, pretending to be asleep, she 
beheld Sueela seated abed, tossing her buried face, sobbing. 
And one noon she went seeking Sueela to the bottom of the 
royal park, having lately observed that after the return from 
the river-bath Sueela disappeared a little, and she wished to 
see what Sueela disappeared for. She could not see Sueela, 
who knew how to be invisible; but at the far bottom of the 
park through a knob-hole of the stockade, she saw Cobby’s 
back walking off: which thing also caused her eyebrows to 
rise a little. 


XXVII 


THE CAPTURE IN THE PASS 

O NE dark evening a week afterwards Sueela departed 
from the sigodhlo to go to visit some friends at a 
farmer-kraal outside Eshowe, having told Spiciewegie- 
hotiu that she would be back long before midnight. 

She duly visited those friends, but remained there only a 
lew minutes, then flew, met at an appointed spot Cobby, Mac- 
ray, and her five friends with the cart, and started off with 
them through wild winds, drizzle and darkness for a pass 
five miles distant. . . . 

It became midnight: anon Spiciewegiehotiu sprang up, 
glanced out at the rude night, and finally grew angry that 
Sueela did not appear. . . . 

An hour later she wrapped up her head, ran out into the 
rain to a near hut, and sent out a messenger, who galloped 
to the farmer-kraal to ask after Sueela, and galloped back 
with the news that Sueela had soon left the kraal; on which 
the Queen wrung her hands together, and dispatched the gal¬ 
loper to Mandaganya to seek Sueela. 

But before he was back, an agitated man was led into her 
presence to recount how, coming home in the night from a 
mountain kraal, he had encountered the white men in flight, 
with five and Sueela—Sueela tied, grieving, screaming, in the 
grip of Macray! They, seeing that he had seen them, had 
chased him, shot at him, but he had dodged and escaped!— 
this bringer of tidings being a sixth friend of Sueela left be¬ 
hind to bring the tidings. 

The Queen listened to it in a white silence; whispered only: 
205 


206 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“Which pass?” and “Who are the five?” then let herself down 
on her bed, where she sat staring as if paralysed; but then 
on a sudden flew into a fury, sprang up, ran about, wished 
to tear out her hair, stamped at the messenger in a passion, 
screaming at him: “Fly out of my sight! Leave me!” then 
stood with her forehead on the hut-wall, quite passive some 
time, till shq span to act. . . . 

The morning light came bright and stormless. There where 
Cobby’s party lay in ambush gadded gentle gales, gladsome 
like gas of champagne, to be quaffed by an organ more 
evolved and gladsome than the stomach; drops of dew—tropic 
dew—thronged all the bush with flushings of jewellery, 
drenching every movement made by jubilant green larks up- 
darting, by canaries screaming greetings, and by the men who 
lay in greenery on a ledge twenty feet square, to which they 
had climbed twenty feet up an incline from a rock-corridor, 
very straight and very long, running through a realm of rock 
that climbed to the skies before them and behind them; and 
in a spelonke, or rock-hole, some distance off below them 
their oxen lay hid in thicket. 

They breakfasted, then waited with agitated hearts. Only 
one of them had not known why they stopped there and 
waited!—Macray. But now he understood. 

“Why do we stop?” he had asked at the stoppage. 

Cobby had answered that there they would engage any 
pursuers with tear-gas, whereupon Macray, with a piercing 
eye of suspicion: “Pursuers! I didn’t know that there were 
to be any pursuers.” 

“Well, but,” Cobby had said with a smile, “the man who 
encountered us after we started has, of course, reported it; 
it must be that we are being pursued by horsemen: so it is 
useless to go on until we have defeated the pursuers, as we 
may here.” 

“Then why did you stop me from firing at the man who 
encountered us?” 

“I don’t want any killing, Macray.” 


207 


THE CAPTURE IN THE PASS 

“I see. Still, let’s be pushing on—come. There aren’t 
any pursuers, if Spiciewegiehotiu is under chloroform—as I 
understand. We have plenty of time to get well away, with 
our oxen fresh.” 

“Spiciewegiehotiu is not under chloroform,” Cobby had 
then bluntly told him. 

Macray’s left eye had gone small. “Sueela lied, then?” 

“It may be that Sueela does not invariably speak the 
truth-” 

“No, especially when you put her to lie.” 

Upon which Cobby had fired a box into Macray’s face. 

Thus their friendly relation definitely ended. Macray, 
though he had snatched at his revolver, had not struck back, 
possessing, as ever, no little self-command: but he then afresh 
condemned Cobby to death, and the second death. 

He could see now that he had been tricked; and, 
though himself a trickster, it envenomed him that others 
should be tricksters in respect of him. 

Here, it was clear, was a trap to catch the Queen, Sueela 
being there, not in order to be with him, but, won by Cobby, 
in order to decoy the Queen to come. . . . He, however, 
quickly enough came to the decision that at the least danger 
of capture for the Queen he would kill in quick succession the 
seven with him, Cobby to begin, then Sueela. . . . 

But against the success of that plan was the plan of Sueela, 
who also had a revolver, she intending to watch, and at any 
movement of Macray’s hand toward his belt to lay him low. 
Moreover, after the breakfast, Cobby, in fulfilment of a prom¬ 
ise made to Sueela, proceeded to disarm Macray, coming to 
where Macray sat apart on a rock to say: “I am sorry now 
that I struck you, Macray, though you were so very offensive. 
But you had better hand me over your revolver for the pres¬ 
ent.” 

“What’s that for?”—Macray started upright. 

“I have reasons—obscure, maybe—but-” 

“You be-!” 


208 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Just in time Cobby had him covered. “Lift up your 
hands! Believe me, I shall not hesitate to shoot, if you are 
mutinous. . . .” He took revolver, knife, Winchester. 

And afterwards Sueela, who had seen this through the 
thicket, came to Macray to stand before him with lowered 
lids, and say: “Me think the Queen will come.” 

“You do?” says Macray. 

“Eheh. And me have something to tell you: me not want 
to kill you, but if you make any sort of noise before Spicie- 
wegiehotiu and all her men pass this ledge, me stab you.” 

Bitterly impotent, he smiled upward at her, saying: “My 
Sue, my black-livered Sue! we may meet again.” 

The sun climbed up high, and then hid away his face with 
that fickleness of the days of the rainy season, breezes sough¬ 
ing now through rough seas of trees, bringing drizzles, breath¬ 
ing that delicious bleakness and chill of November reveries 
and memories. It was noon before Cobby, lying at the edge 
of the ledge, spy-glass at eye, spied a figure coming, pigmily 
remote, alone, on the road below. His heart started, ceased 
to beat, and, white with excitement, he breathed to Sueela: 
“She comes.” 

A shivering seized Sueela. She whispered: “How many 
men?” 

“I see none. . . .” 

“My God!” she breathed. Somehow this terrified her! 

On plodded the solitary figure, and suddenly Cobby’s fore¬ 
head rushed red, he sending out at her the shout: “Cceur de 
Lion!” 

“Sh-h-h ”—from Sueela in an anguish of secrecy, although 
the figure was evidently still too distant to catch any shout. 

But presently all saw her, and every breast there quailed 
at her coming more than if she had come accompanied by 
squadrons of cavalry: some majesty of self-assurance, some 
spell of proper authority, was suggested in that steady step¬ 
ping, that did not pause and palter like common steps—and 
some menace: for to their nerves she came, not as a bird to 


THE CAPTURE IN THE PASS 209 

the snare, but as a judge. Cobby himself felt it, and the flush 
of his shout at her rapidly perishing out of his face, left it 
blanched; the five black men lay visibly affrighted; and 
Sueela, wringing her hands, lamented to Cobby: “Oh, you 
not get her! You not get her! We all ruined!” 

“Nonsense!” answered Cobby, turning irritated upon her: 
“why not get her? She comes alone!” 

“Why you think she come alone—on foot? She not look¬ 
ing for us—she know we here! That why she not bring any 
men, she not want them to be killed, she come alone to cap¬ 
ture us! Maybe she guess all, all. . . .” 

“Well, suppose so—what then? She is powerless! When 
she comes I simply take her.” 

“Oh, you not take her!” she cried in an ecstasy of dis¬ 
tress with a cry-cry face: “you think she come like that, and 
not have some plan? Oh, tie my hands together quick!” 

At the same time Macray, lying on his face some feet away, 
called to Cobby: “Now you think you have her safe, don’t 
you? But I’ll bet you haven’t.” 

Cobby turned sharply upon him. “Don’t you want me to 
have her? That is why we are in Wo-Ngwanya!” 

“Not a question of what I want,” answered Macray: “I 
only remark that you haven’t got her yet, and probably won’t, 
not if I know the girl. If you do get her now, she’ll be back 
in her pig-sty within two days. . . .” 

And on the solitary figure plodded, showing already her 
stretch of shin, then showing the rhythm of her hips’ motion 
and wilful shoulders swinging, like some trained pacer’s of 
“the films,” then the raising of her face in friendship to the 
spray of a rain fresh as the winds, and as the wild fresh 
thicket, and the wild fresh breath of the spirit of Being, then 
showing how the puffs of the wind kept fluttering the flimsy 
stuff, saffron and black, of her kaross, and showing at last 
with how grave and estranged a face she came. 

To gas, or not to gas, her foreground: this was Cobby’s 
problem. He shrank , . . ! 


210 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

When she was opposite the ambush, her pace a little slack¬ 
ened—involuntarily perhaps; but she did not look upward, 
walked on beyond: and now Cobby, springing to his feet, 
gave a signal, and all, save Sueela, streamed down upon her. 

As she span to face them, Cobby, who was very agitated, 
ran up to her with the announcement: “Now, you see I have 
you.” 

She seemed not to see, to hear, him, but, eyeing the five 
blacks, said quietly to them: “You touch me, no?” and 
drew a knife from her moocha-band to hold at her bosom, to 
penetrate: and it was with wide eyes that they beheld a 
thread of red astray on her left breast. . . . 

And in one moment now was revulsion and revolution of 
emotion: to ten eyes welled ten waters—all young men with 
warm minds. “ Bayete” “No!” broke in protest out of one 

mouth; one knelt with wrung palms; all put out their arms 
in shame-faced reproach to her, while from the ledge broke 
a shriek—Sueela’s—who in a moment more was flying, tied, 
down the incline, wild of eye, toward that knife. 

“So you not want me to die?” 

“Bayete!” one protested with parallel arms extended tense. 

“Kneel down, then.” 

“Nonsense! Don’t be tricked!” Cobby cried out. “You 
are my men!” 

Down, with brows bent to the ground, they knelt. 

“Say after me: ‘Bayete. 9 ” 

“Bayete!” 

“ ‘Our Mother.’ ” 

“Our Mother.” 

“ ‘Live for your sons.’ ” 

“Live for your sons.” 

“Very well: me will. Now get up. Me pardon Sir Caray. 
Arrest Sir Cobby.” 

Upon which Cobby, who had no appetite for any more 
“Elephant,” and had tear-gas (non-poisonous) with him, 
darted into a run to get far enough off to cast a bomb and 


THE CAPTURE IN THE PASS 


211 


gas the lot of them, in order to be gone with her from 
Africa: but after him the blacks darted so sharply, that he 
had hardly any start: to gas them would have been to gas 
himself; and the thought that if he cast a bomb toward her 
in that spot, running the risk of slightly wounding her, he 
might gas the oxen also caused him to falter; and, as he 
faltered, he was caught. The men then besought him: “You 
may as well—she too much for us—we not get her”—and he 
walked back to her in the midst of them. 

Having now unbound Sueela’s hands, she tossed the cord to 
the blacks to bind Cobby’s, an operation which Cobby per¬ 
mitted with a bitter smile of disdain, in which was some self¬ 
disdain, for if he had gassed her from the ledge, and not 
shrunk and trusted to luck, the result might have been quite 
different; and to himself he said: “A fool is a man who is 
wise too late.” 

Meantime, Macray, all asmile, was saying to the Queen: 
“Thanks for ‘pardoning’ me, Bayete : but there is nothing to 
pardon. I ( was going off to my country, as I have a right to 
do, but I had no notion that a trap was being laid for your 
Majesty by Sir Cobby and that young woman, who wasn’t be¬ 
ing carried off by me, but came voluntarily with-” 

“Tell her all your lies!” Sueela cried with a grin, glanc¬ 
ing round from dabbing with a cloth the wound in the Queen’s 
breast: “she not believe!” 

“Came voluntarily with Sir Cobby,” Macray continued 
quickly, “in order to decoy you into the trap. She kisses 
Sir Cobby. Her wrists have only just been tied to deceive 
you-” 

“Ha, ha, she not believe!” cried Sueela in triumph: “tell 
some more!” And to Spiciewegiehotiu: “This man hate me 
like poison because me not go with him; he hate us all, he 
want to poison you.” 

“You lie,” Macray remarked. 

“What!” cried the Queen with a flush: “you speak to Sueela 
like that in my presence?” 


212 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“Well, if it pleases you to be deceived, be deceived,” Ma- 
cray nonchalantly said. 

On which Spiciewegiehotiu’s eyebrows lifted, and she said 
to Sueela: “But—why you not call out to warn me before 
me come? Somebody had his hand over your mouth, no?” 

“Yes, of course”—from Sueela. 

Macray chuckled. “Yes, you chief of sinners—of course?” 

The Queen looked from one to the other of them, think¬ 
ing her thoughts, then decided to say to Macray: “But this 
is strange that you speak to Sueela like this. Me not like 
it, Sir Caray.” This she said finishingly; and to the blacks: 
“Now the cart.” 

On which the cart, ready inspanned, was brought from the 
spelonke , and they presently set off northward, the Queen, 
who was weary being wedged uneasily among packages in 
the cart, Sueela trudging beside it, and trudging in front 
among the blacks, Macray and a Cobby all an inflammation 
of rage and rancour. 


XXVIII 


SUEELA MARRIED 

T HE going was slow—steep for the feet of oxen; anon 
an off-wheel was on the brink of abyss; and the Queen 
was so uneasily seated in the cart, that before long 
she chose rather to trudge afoot. And presently Sueela, with¬ 
out looking at her, ventured upon saying: “You let his 
hands free, no? That hurt him. . . 

Spiciewegiehotiu’s eyes dwelt a little on her before the 
reply came: “Yes, go tell them”; and Sueela sped forward 
with the order. 

Thus, with Cobby freed, they trekked that intricacy of rock- 
scenery until near sunset, when all were weary, and Sueela 
exclaimed: “My goodness, when we going to get something 
to eat?” 

“We nearly reach Hyena Kranz now,” Spiciewegiehotiu 
answered, “and there we sleep till the moon come up”—this 
kranz being a m’ug of crag some hundreds of yards across, 
sky-high all round, its bottom rising toward the right, and 
thick with timber, save at the left (west,), where there was 
some bottom all rock in front of a cave: and there a fire was 
lighted, meat, meal taken out of the cart, poospoos cooked, 
and a supper consumed that had no lack of music, for yonder 
to the north a cascade come darkling down the crag, like 
yard after yard of gauze and lawn measured off recklessly 
in a frenzy for customers without money, the two girls sup¬ 
ping with a certain aloofness in the cave’s mouth, the men in 
a crowd round the fire under a dark sky ardent with stars— 
stars large like those sparks which parted from the flame 

213 


214 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

to dart away whither the wind raged, and strange like that 
aged charm of the cascade, like the cadences of that dark¬ 
some psalmody of the winds within the palms. 

Only these sounds, and the fire-wood spluttering: till all 
the men started at another sound—like a neigh. 

“Where it come from?” they asked one another, and sat 
hearkening; but now could hear nothing but the breeze, the 
bruit of the waterfall, and the brawling of the brook that the 
waterfall caused. One sprang upright, saying: “We go 
see,” but Spiciewegiehotiu called from the cave-entrance: 
“Maybe it was a zebra: eat your food—don’t trouble”; and 
again all was noiseless, save the voices of the night’s silence. 

Then after food they smoked, some taking small pipes out 
of holes in the lobes of their ears, and then disposed them¬ 
selves to sleep, the cavern having two halls, both large, with 
a doorway between, in the inner of which the Queen and 
Sueela lay little and lost in rock on their karosses, and the 
others lay in the outer. 

But Sueela could not sleep, because her head was heated 
and teeming with the day’s event, and because a hyena con¬ 
tinued to laugh heartily somewhere in the kingdom and mood 
of the dark, and because water was dripping somewhere from 
the roof into a pool, and, drop by drop, haunted all the hall 
with a succession of echoes. 

Now, the fire outside the cave’s mouth had been made 
bright to scare away wild beasts, and so Sueela after an hour, 
through the portal, saw Cobby go out soft toward the cart, 
saw him come back, bringing something, did not see him lie 
down again. . . . 

At this thing her heart thumped thickly. What could he 
be doing darkly in there in the dying half-light of the fire? 
She sat up to peer—could not see! could hear the men’s 
breathing—every one seemed asleep but Cobby. And she 
wrung her hands, anxious, in trouble for him: for though 
the Queen breathed as in sleep, it was uneasy sleep. . 

So, after a long hour of it, Sueela levered herself soft, 


SUEELA MARRIED 215 

soft, to her feet, to go to him—to warn, to comfort, to kneel 
to him. 

But as she stepped away in haste, her foot touched, upset, 
a jar of water ... on which hack she scuttled to lie down 
anew, for the sound had seemed to trouble the Queen’s breath¬ 
ing. Only for some moments, however: and soon she was up 
once more, and out, her heart in her mouth. . . . 

She found Cobby so bent over one of the blacks, that she 
had to touch him before he saw her; and now she put her 
lips into his ear to hint the meaning: “Come with me." 

He whispered: “Wait" 

After two minutes he stood up; went with her out of the 
cave. 

And active and tactical as cat with rat the Queen was 
tracking their feet. 

She saw them go past the glowing embers, cross a patch of 
long grass and mimosa shrub, and go into timber; and like 
a boa boring after a bird she bored her journey through the 
bush, ferreting after them in flames: the bush burned and 
was not consumed. 

They stopped within a knot of fan-palms, and she could 
see: there was starlight, which gives one-fifth of the light of 
the moon, and there was some off-shine from the embers: but 
nothing could she hear of what was said! for a brook rolled 
near in her hearing, and they spoke very low. 

Sueela’s hand was on Cobby’s shoulder, her face close up 
to his—she wished to know what he had been doing. . . . 

“Making them all unconscious,” he told her: “it took a 
long time, I had to do it so gradually, to evade any outcry; but 
that one you found me over was the last; now I am going to 
do it to her.” 

“Oh, my,” breathed Sueela. 

“Don’t be frightened: it will be late tomorrow before they 
are on their legs again—I am now quite her master, and shall 
show her.” 

But she clung to him, with “Oh, me ’fraid! me ’fraid! 


216 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Better not—listen to me—You know a lot, but a man no good 
against her, she so artful: only some other girl could match 
her . . . why you not leave it to me? Maybe later on me 
think out some way; but me ’fraid— You make Caray un¬ 
conscious, too?” 

Cobby sullenly answered: “Yes, I decided . . . Macray’s 
behaviour has been so strange and reprehensible—he must 
make his way home without me, I without him-” 

“But still—Oh, God, me ’fraaaid—Spiciewegiehotiu do 
some thing—she not go with you—not far—she run away 
while you asleep, she come back, she send horses to where 
she left you, she drag you back, she dog-rabid when she 
angry—maybe she cut off your head: if she cut it off, me 
drop stiff dead”—she drooped, kneeling, to his palm, of which 
she made a cushion for her cheek. 

“No fear of that, dear”—he raised her up—“we shall be 
well away before we sleep; and while I sleep, you will watch 
her.” 

She started! “Me going, too?” in a hoarse throat-tone. 

“Why, yes—Sueela—of course.” 

She tossed her shut eyes about with “Oh, don’t tempt me! 
—you not want me!” 

“Yes, yes,” he said: “of course, you come. She will not 
be happy without you, nor—will I.” 

At that “I” her arms were wrapped round him, and in a 
transport her mouth found his—for a moment only: in the 
next her face was buried in her elbow, and a sob brought 
forth: “Oh, what a wild beast! Me never meant to do that. 
But that the second of the three, no?” 

“Very good,” he consented, “since you wish it so; and one 
more is left. Now we go—come.” 

But she shrank. “No, me not go! me ’fraid. . . . Oh, you 
not hurt her, no?” 

“No, no—no pain: come.” 

“No, me wait here: when you make her unconscious, come 
tell me.” 



217 


SUEELA MARRIED 

“Very good' 5 —he moved to go, and Spiciewegiehotiu was 
off, private as the night-beast stealing, but fleet, leaping the 
bush with high wide strides, bounding, but soundless. 
Cobby did not see nor hear her at all; and when in the 
inner rock-hall he bent over her sleeping-place, there she 
lay breathing as in sleep. 

But in the outer hall she had smelled an odour—of chloro¬ 
form—which she had smelled months before (in her hut on 
the night of Cobby’s arrival), and knew to be narcotic, for 
Macray had foretold her of it: and now when she smelled it 
a foot from her nose, she felt no inclination to inhale it in¬ 
stead of the heavenly air; so, startling Cobby’s heart, sudden 
and straight she sprang, asking composedly enough: “What 
you want, Cobby?” 

He, in a revulsion of emotion from his shock and astonish¬ 
ment, had her snatched to his heart, ravenously devouring 
her mouth, panting at her: “You I want.” 

And passively she took it; but, as soon as she could, still 
on his bosom, lifted up her voice: “Come! kill this man!” 

“No, they won’t come,” he breathlessly uttered—“all 
drugged. Now I am your king. Will you do now every¬ 
thing that I tell you? Do you love me, your cousin, your 
king?” 

“Hate you! King? Slave! So you drug them all, no? 
This is the thanks I get for letting your hands free, no? And 
you seize my body, you dare to kiss me, without my consent? 
For this by itself me sentence you to ten days in ‘The Ele¬ 
phant.’” 

“Oh, nonsense,” he said, holding her close: “in ten days 
you and I will be far enough from ‘The Elephant.’ ” 

“Kiss me again,” she whispered witchingly: on which, fit¬ 
ting her to him, he kissed her continuously; but the instant 
he stopped, “For that,” she said, “me sentence you to twenty 
days in ‘The Elephant.’ Now do it again.” 

“Oh, no more,” he panted, “my heart will break on that 
breast of yours—Spicie—Cousin—Soul—secret of God re- 


218 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

vealed to me—essence of Heaven—Come—no time- Do 

you come, or do I drug you by force? I should like to 
smother up your mouth, and break you to my will.” 

She disengaged herself from him, saying: “Me come.” 

“Come, then, come,”—and, she following, he walked busily 
out, with some wonderment in him, though occupied with 
other things, that she did or said nothing as to Sueela— 
through the outer room, where she kicked one of the blacks 
to see if that would rouse him, and then remarked dryly to 
Cobby: “You think me silly, no? You think me not fore¬ 
see that you might do this?” 

Cobby said nothing till they were at the cave-mouth, when 
he said: “Now to get the oxen together”; on which with one 
hand she seized his sleeve, and, putting with the other hand 
to her lips a small horn hung on her hip below her tunic, 
blew a tooting. 

The moon had just mounted up, cumbered in a jubilee of 
clouds and colours, transmuting the mood of the night as 
mightily as that tooting transmuted the mood of the wood, 
which was suddenly arustle with troops rushing: for Spicie- 
wegiehotiu had not gone out solitary from Eshowe, though 
she had gone on solitary from this spot, in order to safe¬ 
guard her men from the disadvantages of an ambush; now 
they came pelting, a stream of tails and feathers, to make 
hasty prostrations at the Queen’s feet; and, lost in astonish¬ 
ment, Cobby pretty soon stood a prisoner at a signal of her 
finger. . . .. 

In the same moments came Sueela rushing, speechless, star¬ 
ing terrors; but immediately felt better when the Queen said: 
“There you are. . . . Couldn’t sleep, no? Went out into 
the air, no?” 

“Eheh”—her eyes dwelling, dwelling, on the Queen’s face. 

And Spiciewegiehotiu remarked: “The moon up: we go 
on.” 

“Fall in!” an officer now called out, and the troop drew 
up in two ranks on the rock-ground between the grass and 


219 


SUEELA MARRIED 

the grotto, by which time, Cobby had been dragged to be tied 
to the cart, he calling to the Queen: “You shall kneel to 
me!” 

She waved her hand at him, calling with banter: “Some 
other day!” then at once turned to tell the officer about the 
six drugged, bidding him kick them awake; and when he had 
tried in vain, she said to him: “They all traitors, except the 
white one: so leave ten of your men with food to arrest them 
when they wake. Now the horses and the oxen.” 

All on horses, except four with the oxen and with Cobby, 
they now set off, the Queen and Sueela on their Selim and 
Mustapha: but the farther they travelled, the deeper into 
her feet sank Sueela’s heart for affright at the Queen’s si¬ 
lence. If she said anything, Spiciewegiehotiu answered short, 
and when morning dawned upon them she understood that 
that was doomsday dawning. 

As they were now only a few miles from the town, a 
rumour of them flew, people streamed to view them, and 
Cobby had to endure no lack of scowls and frowns, prophe¬ 
cies of ill-fortune, one old woman pulling his ear to say: 
“Now she cut you short, my man”; even one of his smith- 
friends gave ungracious glances at his misery and ignominy 
and haggard aspect, though the smith, Rambya, boldly 
grasped his hand. 

From the great gate of Eshowe they led him away west¬ 
ward to “The Elephant,” followed by that glowering ogle of 
Sueela’s grief, upon whom, too, the sword of doom was about 
to drop: for when, some way up the great square, they were 
come to the point nearest to Mandaganya’s domicile, the 
Queen, languidly waving to the throng, said to Sueela: “Now 
go to your mother, Sueela. Later you hear from me. You 
not to send me any messages.” 

Like lead fell Sueela’s head, her fingers stiffened, her lips 
gaped, her stare gazed into the depths of hell; and, saying 
not a word, she turned her horse’s head, to walk it as woe¬ 
fully slow away as after the dirges and hearse of Hope. 


220 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Thenceforth another than Sueela slept in a hut with a 
Queen who did not sleep, who, of all the bereaved and soli¬ 
tary, was the deepest bereaved and lost in solitude. 

Three days later three ambassadors of Wo-Ngwanya, sent 
to M’Niami, stood before King Daisy in the kotla of his 
great-place amid a crowd of councillors; and Daisy said to 
them: “Now say your say: me listen.” 

Upon which one lifted up his voice and said: “Spicie- 
wegiehotiu say to Daisy She want to strengthen the friend¬ 
ship at present reigning between her and Daisy: so she prof¬ 
fer afresh the hand of the lady Sueela in marriage to Daisy.” 

Now, the good Daisy had “had some,” as people say, in 
respect of marriage with Sueela, and was not taking any 
more without due circumspection and care in stepping. . . . 
His heart started at that message! This Sueela had cost him 
much in kine, and fears in the watches of the night! But 
for that snatching off of Spiciewegiehotiu by Prince Dzini- 
kulu in the hour of her victory, there might now have been 
no more Daisy, hardly any more the name of M’Niami. So, 
having banqueted the ambassadors and given them gifts, he 
sent them back with thanks to the Queen, and with the mes¬ 
sage that in a week he would despatch an answer. . . . 

Daisy was at present inclined to elderliness, and a man 
likely to be speedily subordinated and sat upon by Sueela, 
if he had the misfortune to marry her—a rather weak, rather 
ridiculous negro, who regarded himself as specially the 
protege of God, or ghosts, or something, and “me protected” 
he ever said with half a laugh, “something protect me!” If 
there was an epidemic, or an accident, and he escaped, he’d 
exclaim: “Me preserved! something preserve me”—a truth 
certainly, but the absurd person never observed that it was 
true, too, of many men, and deer, and pompions, and potted 
meats—a tall man, a little knock-kneed, with a straggling 
beard, a tooth which projected a little upon the lower lip, 
coloured eye-whites—not very pretty. But, though so pro¬ 
tected, he was wary: and, instead of sending an embassy, 


SUEELA MARRIED 221 

himself journeyed to Eshowe, to converse with Spiciewegie- 
hotiu. 

There he was well feted, and quickly convinced himself that 
Spiciewegiehotiu’s object this time was really bridals, and 
not war. “While you and Sueela live, we friends,” she said, 
clasping his hand: “When you or she die, me add 
M’Niami to Wo-Ngwanya.” 

Then, with a retinue, he went to see Sueela at Man- 
daganya’s, and back in high spirits hastened to Spiciewegie- 
hotiu, who said to him: “You like her, no?” 

“Eheh—she good—she a heifer—oh yes. Sullen, still, 
yes; but she soon love me. Better take the three thousand 
for her.” 

“No, only the two. . . . So, Daisy, you not ’fraid she 
scratch out your eyes?” 

“Poh, no: she not do that. . . . Me protected! Something 
protect me.” 

“So she go to you; you get her, Daisy. But you always 
treat her well, no?”—her voice broke, she turned from him 
with lips that quivered and worked. 

The same evening came the doctoress-mother suppliant, and 
fondled the Queen’s hands, saying: “Sueela say Spare her.” 

On which Spiciewegiehotiu flushed. “Me told her not to 
send me any messages.” 

“No, she not send! me come myself,” the sybil said hastily: 
“but she say She not want to marry, she only want you in 
this world.” 

Up sprang Spiciewegiehotiu, angry to pace. “Spare her? 
Me marry her to a King! She and you not proud?” 

“Yes, me proud! me thank you!—my goodness. But she 
sick—she got so thin—she not want to go so far from you— 
she say She rather marry a slave where she could see your 

foot pass sometimes—oh, how could you turn her- She 

done something very bad, no?” 

Spiciewegiehotiu’s head hung down, her gaze on the 
ground, full of a lugubrious brooding, and she muttered: 



222 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“No, she not done any bad; it’s me, it’s me: me have a bit¬ 
ter heart.” 

“But you not bitter for nothing,” the sybil said: “me 
know very well she done something: me think you catch her 
with a man—no? Tell Mandaganya; tell Ma-Sueela.” 

But the Queen, at present very fickle in temper, said fret¬ 
fully: “Oh, me tell you no- Go away! Me not want 

to see anybody.” 

Hence when, after Mandaganya had gone, Macray sent in 
a pressing request to see the Queen, she said to the messenger: 
“Tell him no: ask what he want.” 

Whereupon Macray sent in the second message: Why 
marry Sueela to Daisy? He himself was ready to marry 
her instead: was the Queen willing? 

“Tell him yes,” answered Spiciewegiehotiu: “tell him bring 
the two thousand cattle for her into the kotla”: at which the 
messenger grinned, and Macray grumbled: “the bitch!” 

The next afternoon Daisy departed for M’Niami, to make 
ready for the week of wedding-feast and ceremony; and four 
forenoons afterwards Spiciewegiehotiu, after her bath, left 
her bevy of attendants, and worked her way with furtiveness, 
eyeings and lurkings, to climb a mound covered with mi¬ 
mosa, whence to descry the road out of the town. There 
she waited until cavalry cantering appeared, within which 
was Sueela; and “let her go,” she glumly muttered; but 
when the dust of it was no more visible, suddenly her counte¬ 
nance convulsed, and but that she stuffed up her mouth 
with a towel and bit into it, bitterly she would doubtless have 
howled aloud. . . . 

Alle das Neigen 
Von Herzen zu Herzen, 

Ach! wie so eigen 
Schaffet das Schmerzen! 

Thus, anyway, with wailing, went the excellent Sueela away, 
to be lain with by the likes of Daisy, though to sit 
him. . . . 


on 



XXIX 


SEBINGWE 


C OBBY, meanwhile, tholing the glooms of “The Ele¬ 
phant” in his old room, got during two weeks no news 
of the external world, but then heard from the Collec¬ 
tor of Messages, firstly, that Sueela was wedded, and then 
heard, what to him was like a burn, that the five men-friends 
of Sueela whom she had tempted to venture to trek with her 
and him, who then had forsaken her and him to kneel and plead 
with the Queen to continue to live, were now about to be exe¬ 
cuted for treason. Treason they had no doubt committed: 
but still he was wrung with compunction for them. “My 
God!” he exclaimed in pain, “is the girl a guillotine? Is she 
without bowels of mercy?” and indirectly through the Sinder- 
ngabya (Guardian of the Sad), being unable to send direct, 
he sent a message to Spiciewegiehotiu, proffering himself, 
since he was the cause of the fault and fall of those five un¬ 
fortunates, to die in their stead, or in the stead of any one 
of them. 

Twelve days later he received the answer: “Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu say You die the day she want, not before, not after”; 
and the official added in a confidential manner: “You lie 
low—not worry her: she cross like a thicket of prickly-pears 
these days. They say she not sleep at night, she find no rest, 

because the lady Sueela gone; and now war coming-” 

“War? With whom? War? What for?” 

“Me not know. Maybe no war; maybe war. Some say 
yes, some say no. War with Sebingwe—if it come.” 

“Heavens!—another. . . . But tell me—is there no chance 
at all of these five unfortunates being spared?” 

223 


224 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“No chance: tomorrow they die. But everybody grumbling 
because they die before you; everybody waiting—your turn 
next they say. You lie low—maybe you not die. Some 
have it to say maybe you take the Queen’s fancy! Ha, ha, 
they a jealous, suspicious lot; and their tongues! Waw!” 

Their jealousy and suspicion and tongues were to be given 
an impulse! for on the thirty-first day of his imprisonment, a 
few days after the execution of the five, Cobby, to the sur¬ 
prise and offence of all, saw himself set free, and in the kotla 
was followed by a mob that goggled and nodded at him with 
no good-will. 

His liberators, under instructions to conduct him straight 
to the Queen, failed in this, he flatly refusing, saying, “No I 
have to bathe”; but, this done, he went—to find Spiciewegie- 
hotiu like “a bear with a sore head!”—or a lion. “You not 
tired of ‘The Elephant’?” she asked, spinning sharply upon 
him. 

“Yes,” he answered, “and of you, and of Wo-Ngwanya.” 

This held her arrested. “You tired of me?” 

“Yes, and of all your ruthlessness and wars.” 

“Oh, me not want any long logic! Me only want to know 
one thing of you: you done now trying to carry me off 
where me not want to go?” 

“Quite done,” he answered: “never again—you have my 
undertaking. Now I go alone.” 

At which her lip whitened with spite, her eyes spitting 
fire. “Bah!” she bitterly said, “you can’t”—glancing back¬ 
ward at him, pacing the hut—“me drag you back by your 
red hair.” 

“Be quiet,” he answered with the authority of a pride 
quiet, yet impassioned to pomposity: “you are speaking to a 
priest and king of kings. If I tell you that I can go, you 
are not to say that I cannot. It was my reluctance to for¬ 
sake Macray that has held me here, but I am no longer reluc¬ 
tant—today I hear that Macray is even seeking to instigate 
the people against me. So when I will I go, having a hun- 


SEBINGWE 225 

dred and twenty winged horses to haul me by a path that 
no hawk knows, and the hounds of your scouts cannot pur¬ 
sue their spoor. Be quiet.” 

This again gave her pause, she standing rather agape— 
since savage and semi-savage intellects more or less believe 
every marvel they hear. 

“Where you have these hundred and twenty horses?” she 
wished to know. 

“Horse-power: in some cans.” 

But this defied credulity—horses with wings in cans, potted 
horses with wings. And yet—having a trust in his state¬ 
ments, having beheld his marvels at the banquet, she half- 
believed; a half-belief which had power to make her pale. 

She faced him to ask: “And, if you could go, you would 
go?” 

“Yes; duty; work to do; duty.” 

“Without me?” 

“Yes.” 

“Go, then,” she muttered, turning from him; and then she 
span to scream at him “Go! Go!” and stamp at him. 

“Dear love!” 

“Go!” she screamed again, glaring at him. 

“Don’t be angry with me,” he now gently said. “Why are 
you so cross? You don’t look well. . . .” 

This broke her down. “Oh!” she cried out, running to 
him, and, her forehead on his shoulder, wailed: “Me want 
Sueela! Me want her!” 

He felt her bosom bob sobbingly without any sound com¬ 
ing, and “Heavens!” he exclaimed, “then, why have you 
married her to Daisy?” 

Her eyes fixed him with a glance, then dropped, she not 
saying anything, till she made the remark, apparently irrele¬ 
vant: “Maybe war coming; Sebingwe-” 

“Yes, another,” said Cobby dryly, “I know: Sebingwe this 
time. Why, why, can you not live-?” 

She interrupted. “Now you see why me marry Sueela to 




226 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

Daisy: partly why”—again she fixed him a little with that 
silent eye, saying “partly” 

“No, I don’t see-” 

“But you know that Daisy and Sebingwe friends? and if 
Sueela married to Daisy she not let Daisy help Sebingwe 
against me. Maybe Sueela not love—me; but she love Wo- 
Ngwanya mad: so now Sebingwe never have help against Wo- 
Ngwanya.” 

“I see!—you artful being. Policy, policy, all is policy 
with Spiciewegiehotiu! and for policy she will pluck out 
her own heart, and the hearts of those that love her. But 
why, after all, fight Sebingwe? Why not live-” 

“Cobby, me tell you”—her hand on his arm—“me not 
fight Sebingwe: if we fight, Sebingwe fight me. You believe 
me, no, Cobby? Sebingwe fight me. Ten days ago me send 
an embassy to Sebingwe to ask him how it was that so many 
Wa-Mashenya fight in Daisy’s army the last time Daisy fight 
me? and me ask Sebingwe if he willing to hand over to me as 
slaves those Wa-Mashenya that fight against me. No harm 
in that, Cobby, no? You see, no? that me not pick any 
quarrel with Sebingwe. Sebingwe send me an insulting an¬ 
swer: he say Noh! he not willing. So, Cobby, you see, no? 
that it is Sebingwe-” 

“Quite so,” said Cobby: “Sebingwe had no right to let his 
men fight against you. . . .” 

She danced two steps behind his back. 

“So, Cobby, if Sebingwe fight me, you fight this time for 
me, no?” 

“You may be sure!—on condition that I find your account 
of it true: for you deceived me in respect of the Daisy- 
quarrel, remember—deliberately. But, if your quarrel is 
just, those who insult you insult me, and those who fight 
you fight the lightning. When I said that I am going from 
you on my winged horses, I didn’t mean that I’d go if you 
are in any trouble or peril: in trouble I am with you till the 





SEBINGWE 227 

day of death, your trouble being my trouble, since somehow 
your blood is my blood, and your life my life.” 

Their eyes met, and in his and in hers the same tear 
burned and quivered, by the work and miracle of that quick 
Spirit that erewhile whispered, Let there be Life! and Life 
quickened and quivered, burned, bled, yearned, yelled. . . . 

“Cousin Cobby . . she held out her hand, and he held 
it, felt it, possessed it, flesh and bone, appropriating it sacra¬ 
mentally in his breast, until she shivered, and drew it, her 
lids drooping, and moved from him. 

“Still,” he said, “there is no need for any war, I hope: 
things can be adjusted. Think, dear, of the waste, not of 
blood only, but of wealth and effort. They say the M’Niami 
people are still impoverished, while you here-” 

“Oh, war good, me know,” she interrupted: “it make 
stronger men and cleverer girls: and, if that cost dear, it 
worth it. If only the men had no more than one wife, 
plenty of war would make us gods.” 

His eyebrows lifted. “Indeed?” says he. “Tell me: what 
makes you think that?” 

“Me reckon it up; me see, me know. . . . War make less 
men, and so permit a man to pick out a better mother for 
his young.” 

Dumb-struck stood Cobby and agape; as he writes in his 
diary of it: “Here was ‘a new thing’ for me. For though 
Darwin and that school, like her, were sure that ‘war is 
good,’ Darwin thought that the good must come through 
fatherhood—never somehow thought of motherhood —forgot 
that there are mothers, too—and, in arguing that the good 
comes through fatherhood, refuted himself (since the brav¬ 
est fall), saw anon that he refuted himself, and was per¬ 
plexed, though still convinced that ‘war is good.’ So I 
stood dumb before her, thinking in myself, ‘Dear me, had 
I to come to Africa to hear this?’ But by her theory war 
must be accompanied by monogamy; otherwise, after the war, 


228 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

the remaining men simply take more wives, including the 
riff-raff. Does this explain the stationariness of savages, of 
Asia? Heaven knows! Some time I must give the matter 
some systematic study.” 

But instead of attempting now to deal with theory he re¬ 
turned to the personal, saying to her: “So, then, you want 
war?” 

“No, no, no,” she hastily answered: “Cobby me not want 
war!—you believe me, no! Sebingwe want war. War good, 
me say, but me not want war—now. And suppose me want 
war!” she boldly added, “Cobby, you not see why?” 

“No, I don’t-” 

“Cobby, the people not like you. At first they like you, 
but you make them not like you. If you fight for them, and 
win, they like you. And even if they not like you then, war— 
and victory—crown me with the power to live up to my 
dreams, and snap my fingers in their faces. Now you see, 
no?” 

“Yes, but at what a cost—to other people!” he cried out. 
“Suppose that war, as you say, is ‘good’ for the stock: then, 
the forces of Nature may be depended upon to bring about 
war, whoever doesn’t want it; but is it not the obvious duty 
of the individual, for his part, to put forth all his effort to 
avert so much woe and waste of work?” 

“Eheh—of course,” she answered with the shadow of a 
smile, eyeing a match which she had lighted: for, supplied 
by the white men with matches, she kept a box on her, and, 
miserly-spendthrift, would anon strike one as a fire-work, to 
entertain herself. 

Cobby then asked when her next message was to be sent 
to Sebingwe; to which she answered: “Today. . . . His 
men were waiting. . . .” 

“And will you send a mild message? Come to some com¬ 
promise-” 

She smiled to herself, then on a sudden, dashing down the 
match-end, pettish, pouting: “Oh, Cobby, me sad, me mad, 




SEBINGWE 229 

me cross, me want Sueela! If me not have Sueela, me fight 
everybody.” 

“What can one do?” cried Cobby. 

“Me low, me mean, yes,” she muttered as to herself: “me 
have no pride; but—she gone—me not see her any more.” 

“Why not send-?” he began to say, when, a sound from 

o’utside coming to them, she started, breathing, “What that?” 
then sharply ran to the door to hearken. 

A noise of voices brawling afar was brought her on the 
breeze, in whose embroilment after a minute her ear seemed 
to hear insistently: “Send the white men away!” and she 
became deadly pale. 

Then, running toward the hut from the avenue gate, she 
saw a guardsman all wafted backward by a gale that was 
trouncing the forestry like a rout of frocks tossed in profligate 
carousal; and he at her whisper, “What’s happening?” an¬ 
swered: “Bayete! the people call out to you to send the 
white men away; they press against the sigodhlo gate; Sir 
Caray on his horse haranguing them. ... He say Sir Cobby 
soon carry you off from them, if you not send him away 
. . . and they angry. . . . Sir Caray say you want Sir Cobby 
for—yourself. . . .” 

“The scum!” with a coarse contempt her countenance 
scowled; red rage rushed to her brow; and round about she 
ranged almost at a run, like one evading something which 
chases. “The scum! Me show them white men—war for 
them! If you not bleed them, they not believe in you; if 
you not kick and cuff them, they not love you. War! War! 
The scum! Me drench Wo-Mashenya in blood—me show 
them advising-” 

“I think,” Cobby ventured to say, “that you might comport 
yourself with some calm.” 

“Oh, dung to you!” she intolerantly retorted, slapping her 
haunch at him: “you think me care what you have to say?” 
and down now she let herself flop upon the floor like a child 
in a tantrum, her heels beating a tattoo, her face a painting 


230 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

of vexation; but then sprang up to scream in a passion to 
the guardsman: “Have Sebingwe’s embassy summoned to 
me! Me show the scum blood!” 

“If I may venture-” Cobby stiffly began to say. 

“You not hear me say me not want to hear?" her flying 
tongue shrilled, she spinning upon him. “How long you go¬ 
ing to stay here? All day? My goodness, you can’t leave 
me when you once see me? You think me have nothing to 
think about but you?" 

With an elegant dignity Cobby bowed, and, without a 
word, turned and went out. 

“Go home!” she called after: “you not to go outside the 
sigodhlo.” 

“I go where I please,” he answered, chin up. 

But halfway to the park gate he paused at the thought 
that he ought to do something or other to stop her from send¬ 
ing a message to Sebingwe in her then temper; and he went 
back to say: “If you will promise not to send to Sebingwe 
until half-time before noon tomorrow morning, I will bring 
you Sueela by then.” 

This arrested her. “You talking wild, no? . . . You not 
get half to M’Niami by then.” 

“I will, and be back. Promise.” 

She stood with suspended breath. This interested her— 
both the extraordinary voyage, and the object of it—interest¬ 
ing both her curiosity and her longing. 

“How you ‘will’? . . . And you think me want to see 
her?—that snake? that strumpet?” 

“You said that you wanted. She is not a snake nor a 
strumpet.” 

“How you know? You know her well, no? No! Me not' 
want! You and she enjoy the voyage together, no?” 

“I don’t—understand you. . . . Then, I won’t go. But 
please don’t see Sebingwe’s embassy yet-” 

Now she yielded to yearning, and said averted: “Go, if 



231 


SEBINGWE 

you like. . . . Yes, go. Me see if you come back by half¬ 
time before noon. Me not see the embassy till then; but 
then me see it, and send it back.” 

“Very good, you undertake—good-bye.” He went quickly 
away. 


XXX 


IN THE CANES 

C ALLINGS and noises of the populace beyond the 
sigodhlo gate were still distinctly audible anon, as 
Cobby walked from the royal gate to prepare for his 
trip; and he had not long gone when Macray, gaining an 
entrance at the sigodhlo gate, presented himself at the royal 
gate to see the Queen. 

Macray was at present in a very impatient, a very danger¬ 
ous and devilish frame. He had said to himself: “I want 
to go, and I’m going —free America!” And that day, on 
hearing of Cobby’s release, he no longer allowed himself to 
doubt that Spiciewegiehotiu must be “gone on” Cobby, and 
had no intention of ever letting Cobby go—for he no longer 
feared "that she would ever go; and since she meant to keep 
Cobby, she must mean to keep him, Macray, who was her 
natural ally against Cobby. Hence his oratory from horse¬ 
back, explaining to the mob that Cobby must be sent away. 
He had, moreover, a dread that Cobby, who was also im¬ 
patient to be away, might now go off alone in his aeroplane, 
and, Cobby once gone, Macray understood that the shears 
would be sharp to cut short, for he was sure that Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu knew him, and did not love, nor had forgotten that 
stew which the dog would not touch. . . . 

Her he hated much more than Cobby, who had dared to 
slap, to lay hands upon his body with chloroform; her death 
would cut the knot of all his difficulties; and he now contem¬ 
plated bringing it about, together with Cobby’s and thousands, 
probably, of other deaths, and this in due course of business, 


IN THE CANES 233 

with that recklessness of Peace or Rockefeller, without re¬ 
spect or prick of pity. 

But when he presented himself at the royal gate, though 
conscious of danger, he little dreamt in how dreadful a peril 
a phrase of Cobby’s, lately uttered, had put him: for Cobby 
had undertaken to Spiciewegiehotiu never more to attempt to 
carry her off; and since she had a trust in Cobby’s prom¬ 
ises, her use for Macray was now wholly over, she now being 
as ready and prompt to slay as he: so that, as between her 
and him, climax and crisis was here, and he was unlikely 
on the morrow to scatter oratory upon the Wa-Ngwanya. 

Intending to arrest him that very day of oratory, and reckon¬ 
ing that he would draw revolver when arrested, she wel¬ 
comed his request for an interview; for, since interviewers 
left their weapons at the gate, to grant the interview, and 
arrest within, might he to save a life, or lives. 

So it was some minutes before he was admitted; then, put¬ 
ting down weapons, as usual, at the portals, he went in. But 
at his knee, within the bagging of his knickerbockers, he had 
a small revolver for self-defence, if necessary. 

Having offered a stool she said: “Well, Sir Caray, what 
you want?” 

“Look here, Great-great,” says he, “I want to go home: 
can I go? or am I a prisoner?” 

Her answer, she having “spotted” the object in his 
knickerbocker-knee, was: “Prisoner? You go when you 
like.” 

“You won’t be dragging me back, if I start?” 

“No, no: me not ’fraid of Sir Cobby any more. You go.” 

Now, standing up, she paced the room once, never turning 
her back to him, while his thought was: “Why not get her 
now?” But he feared the people; and had neater plans. As 
to her affable manner, that little convinced him. 

When she sat anew, she moved her stool between him and 
the door: and he noted this. 

“Well, I don’t believe you mean it,” he said—“I’m frank. 


234 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

But, come: let’s do a deal! I want something and you want 
something. I want to go, and you want Cobby. Now, you 
can’t keep Cobby, for he has means to go that you can’t 
dream of, and he will go, for he’s told me so. So, if / tell 
you how to keep Cobby for ever, and if you swear by ‘The 
Elephant’ to let me go, that will be fair.” 

Unexpected matter for her. She could not quite conceal 
her keenness. “Yes!” she said: “that fair.” 

“Well, swear,” said he. 

“Oh, no—you tell me first,” says she: “then me swear”— 
scratching a parrot’s neck. 

“Very good- I’ll trust you. Well, this is what I say: 

to keep Cobby, you must destroy his waggon-loads. Now, 
breaking up is no good, for, while you were breaking up 
half, he’d be off with the other half; and there are a lot of 
little spirits in his things, little but strong, which you can’t 
break up. So only fire is any good.” 

She was silent, but bright were her eyes. He understood 
that she would do it. 

Often the thought of breaking up had occurred to her, 
but inertly in her lack of certain knowledge; also she had 
had it in mind to learn first what the different things were 
“good for.” She had not thought of firing them: and it was 
the thought of Cobby, on his return, finding all his “winged 
horses” burned, and himself her prisoner for life, that lit 
up her eyes with that fire of spite and triumph. 

But for Macray the question now was when she would do it, 
he wishing to be out of Eshowe then, there being that in the 
waggons which, with a blaze under them, would blow, not 
only Spiciewegiehotiu and Cobby, but Eshowe itself to 
heaven. 

“Now have I deserved your thanks?” he asked her. 

“Maybe-” she shrugged, she smiled. 

“You mean to do it, then. But—when?” 

That evening she meant to, Cobby’s intended departure for 
M’Niami fitting in with so neat and sweet a temptingness; 



IN THE CANES 235 

but, by nature, reticent, she merely answered: “Some time, 
maybe, me do it.” 

“But tell me definitely.” 

She shot a glance. “Why?” 

“I think I’d like to clear out of Eshowe just then,”—he 
chuckled—“Cobby will be so madly angry, and he’ll guess 
who told you to do it.” 

As he said this, he saw one of the swaths of hangings round 
the room move somewhat; and as she, too, saw it, and saw 
that he saw, the situation between them became thenceforth 
extremely tense and keen. 

“No fear,” she answered: “Sir Cobby just going away 
somewhere. . . . Tell me: how long it take him to go to 
M’Niami and come back?” 

“M’Niami? Four days?” He had now unbuttoned his 
knickerbocker-knee, and placed the revolver on his knee under 
her eyes—to bid her forbear and beware, to bid her be cer¬ 
tain that of those who bit the dust she would be the first; 
and “Cobby going to M’Niami?” says he: “what for? Oh, 
I see—to bring Sueela?” 

Now they were sitting tight on the qui vive —eye, ear, each 
nerve alert—leaning a little toward each other, each know¬ 
ing that life was the victor’s prize, she with her finger-joints 
at her cheek, thinking on him, her eyes alight, active as cats 
on prickles to spring. As to the object of Cobby’s voyage 
she did not answer, but said suddenly: “Forgive me—you 
take some snuff, no?”—and presented snuff. 

This a little nonplussed him: at once he fathomed her mo¬ 
tive for having it, but not for showing it—unless it was the 
same motive with which he showed the revolver, to warn him? 
And he was nonplussed because unsure, and because sure 
that it was well to be sure, in such a war the victory being 
to him who thinks the greatest number of true thoughts per 
second. 

“Thank you, Great-great,” says he, taking the box, and 
barely pretending to inhale, for he thought of poison in it; 


236 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

at the same time he let the snuff slip his fingers to the floor, 
having no desire to have it flung at his eyes. 

“Oh, bad man,” she pouted—“spill all the snuff. That 
bring bad luck for you.” 

“Clumsy!” he said: “forgive me.” 

“Me forgive you. ... So Sir Cobby can’t go and come 
back by tomorrow?” 

“No, how can he?—unless he uses some of the little spirits. 

. . . He going today? Then now’s your chance to fire the 
waggons, while he’s gone. Why not today?” 

“Maybe”—she shrugged, she smiled; and then she went 
“Tishum!” and cried out “Oh! ha, ha.” 

“Ha, ha,” he laughed, and sneezed. 

“Ha, ha—we both have it!” she laughed. 

“Yes, ha, ha-” like chums they chuckled with each 

other. 

“And now,” he next said—for form’s sake, not caring at 
all—“it is for you to swear that you’ll let me go.” 

“Yes, that fair,” she answered, standing up: “me go get a 
talisman to swear on”—and made a movement toward the 
door. 

But she was his hostage there, and safeguard, against those 
behind the hangings; and jumping up now, with a flush of 
authority, he called out: “Oh, no, you don’t: here you re¬ 
main”—and so crossed the Rubicon. 

In that same moment snuff was fire in his eyes—tossed 
from another box; and into his darkness, even as he darkly 
shot at her, there flashed now a knowledge of the reason why 
she had offered snuff—in order that, if any thought of snuff 
was in him, it might be utterly lulled, in order that he might 
spill the snuff, and think her foiled at that point at least, and 
feel comfortable as to snuff, and be utterly routed and bound 
up by the surprise of the blinding lightning of a second box 
kept ready under her kaross; and when after his second of 
dismay and disaster he darkly fired at where she had been 



237 


IN THE CANES 

standing, she was lying at his feet, and in some moments 
more was soundlessly out of the hut, and flying to hiding. 

But he, conscious of the direction of the doorway, had one 
leg out of it almost as soon as she; but there was seized by 
five, two of whom fell wounded before he lost his revolver, 
and the others, at that awkward spot, failed to take him. 
He was away into the wood, they pursuing, shooting. 

Ecstasy lent him legs, extremity gave him sight, blasphemy 
gave him luck: he clambered over the enclosure, untouched, 
unnoticed, jumped—not far from the gate—and at a run got 
his Winchester before the astonished gate-guards could take 
it upon themselves to stop him; he got beyond the sigodhlo 
gate, vaulted upon his horse, and was gone as the swallow 
swings, hatless, wind-swept, to the bewilderment of the mob 
still populous in the square. But before he was past the 
market, he was being pursued by riders, firing at him, and 
thence to the great-gate he galloped firing backward with his 
repeater, seeing three pitch headlong, himself uninjured; 
then, trampling through the great-gate guards, made off, lay¬ 
ing men low, over the road eastward, and so won clear away. 

Pitiable, now, however, was his plight—his bridges all 
burned behind him; no compass; little ammunition; no pos¬ 
sibility of crossing Africa without, no possibility of going 
back to get, until Spiciewegiehotiu, firing the waggons, de¬ 
stroyed herself, no hope else of getting out of Wo-Ngwanya; 
no hope else of living in it. Still, he was game; he hoped, he 
chuckled. 

Some way out of Eshowe he was aware of a shouting in the 
town—yet another white-man amazement being that day in 
store for the mob, when Cobby, throbbing on his motor¬ 
bicycle, passed rough and rapid, spattering puff-puff, trum¬ 
peting, dragon-goggled, a streak of unreason, all down the 
awna, and out. 

Backing into the bush, Macray watched him come carrying 
on the carrier a black who clung like the drowning about him, 


238 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

blanched to his tongue; and within that bush a Winchester 
was lifted to lay low: for though Macray’s enmity against 
Cobby was not constant and intense, as against the Queen, 
as against Sueela, yet, having shot many, and being shot 
at, just to shoot had become habitual, and a bitter amuse¬ 
ment: so he might then have shot at Cobby, but for his knowl¬ 
edge that Cobby was on the way to fetch Sueela, and that by 
letting Cobby fetch her, by waiting a day, he would be even 
with Sueela, might even manage to ravish ere he smashed, ere 
he left her red. This was snuff and fun to him that, if he 
died, there would be society, for, as to Spiciewegiehotiu, he 
was sure that she would fire the waggons, and dance fan¬ 
dango and devil-dance with Eshowe in the air. He cantered 
on further, then, taking his nag into canes, lay in the glim¬ 
mering in there to ponder upon his misery, to plot and to 
curse and to lurk, and cock his ear for the throbbing of 
Cobby’s return with the girl, and for the shock and earthquake 
of the event at Eshowe. 


XXXI 


NIGHT-RIDE 

A FTER a rough passage, in the course of which he cast 
hundreds of kraals and huts and lions into dumbness 
of affright at the sight of a flagrant dragon flying 
with muttering through the night, Cobby’s cycle-lamp invaded 
the midnight dimness of the sigodhlo of Daisy’s great-place; 
and “my goodness” was on Sueela’s lips, seeing him, and 
“eheh, me come,” sleep still winking on her lids. 

“But your husband?” Cobby suggested. 

“Oh, he. . . . Me go tell him.” 

Whereupon Daisy was but briefly consulted, for he within 
some weeks had been adequately sat upon, and was a bottom- 
dog; and before long they were off, she with shut lids in 
bliss on the carrier embracing Cobby’s body, bliss combined 
with a bicycle-terror which would have been greater but that 
she had witnessed the grin of arrival and delight of the guide 
brought by Cobby, and now left behind. 

Wild was that night of flight for Sueela, an experience of 
teeming mysteriousness, and drama of vast darkness, dismal 
with winds screaming, mixed with myriads of trees streaming 
in retreat, series of drear sceneries receding, to be remembered 
in dreams for ever. It was no fun, however: no moon mostly; 
only stars wind-whiffed like hall-lamps, noises of many 
waters, sometimes the sharp wash of a shower, which passed, 
the road not continuous, never smooth; thrice the bicycle had 
to be hauled through the brawling and rocks of broad shallow 
waters, and where patches of pathless shrub meant many a 
jolt; there were hills whose descent meant peril of a breaking 

239 


240 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

of brakes, and hills up whose incline the bicycle, a paltry 
thing of four and a half horse power, barely crawled, till they 
walked beside it: so toward daybreak, harassed and hot, 
Cobby stopped in forest on the brink of a river to eat a meal, 
Sueela seated very near him, but separate, incapable of eating, 
and once he, en bon camarade, put an arm about her, which 
she very gently and slowly removed, remarking: “She trust 
me with you.” 

“Not without reason,” he answered: “you are a dear good 
thing, and I have a sister whom I do not love more than you.” 

“You love me, no?” she whispered, stroking his arm dis¬ 
tantly with fingers intensely stretched: “that enough for me— 
me could do without food and bed, and yet my belly full, if 
you love me. And you think me not pay you back? Me 
toss all at your dear feet—you think me care?—me give you 
Wo-Ngwanya—my land!—me love its old stones, and how 
it smell on wet days—me give it—and my mother— my 
brothers—my friends—they all say ‘traitress!’—they spit on 
my name —she spit—me not care—me do it for you and for 
her.” 

A sob: and he said “dear,” but added: “Though I don’t 
understand: how will you give me Wo-Ngwanya? and why 
will they say ‘traitress’?” 

“Wait till me know if she fight Sebingwe,” she replied: 
“then me tell you.” 

“She will fight, I think,” Cobby said, “if we are not there 
in time before she sends back Sebingwe’s embassy, for she 
is at present in a most morose and dangerous mood, owing 
apparently to her fretting after you. So with you it rests, 
Sueela, and I depend upon you to stop anything in the way 
of war, since there is no need.” 

She smiled at him as at a child, without reply; and he said: 
“Come then,” springing up. 

Then for three hours more they tholed the roughness of the 
trip, and now in sunlight were running down a bit of road 
with canes on both sides some ten miles from Eshowe, when 


241 


NIGHT-RIDE 

a report of rifle-shot sounded out of the (south) canes on 
their left. The hill being steep, the pace brisk, neither was 
hit, but a second shot pierced the flesh of Cobby’s left arm, 
upon which he lost control of himself and the motor, which 
dashed up a bank to the right, and collapsed over driver 
and passenger—luckily in bush and canes, which concealed 
them from yet a bullet; and with instant nimbleness Sueela on 
her feet had Cobby by the hand, haling him into the thick 
of the canes. 

There they squatted some time, all ear and leer, mouse- 
quiet but for the little movements of Sueela binding Cobby’s 
wound; and, “Who can it be?” Cobby whispered, to which 
she whispered back: “Sh-h— Caray” 

Now another report—from farther in the canes than they, 
the shooter having crossed the road; and now with a flush 
Cobby shot his revolver: upon which he and she moved softly 
off to lurk within some other home of the murky world of 
thicket. 

Other shots followed. The canes being a sea in agitation 
billowing under the blasts of the winds, the swish of local 
agitations may have attracted the aim of the gunman, whose 
roaming and mysterious gun bred not merely terror but a 
sort of awe, as though a ghost was gunning; and immense, 
moreover, was Cobby’s dismay at the time going, the loss of 
so many lives involved in the delay, the object of his voyage 
to Daisy’s frustrated, for already he was late for his rendez¬ 
vous with Spiciewegiehotiu at Eshowe, and still a prisoner 
there in the canes. 

Meantime, to each shot which smashed through the leafage 
a shot of his answered sharply back in challenge, he quickly 
shifting his position after it; and so an hour and a half 
passed, he having now one cartridge only. 

After a monotony of twenty minutes he whispered: “I 
can bear this no more: going: you stay, until I bring a force 
of men.” 

“Me come,” she whispered. 


242 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


“Why? I forbid.” 

He kissed her hand, looked at a little compass, stole off 
toward the road, and had nearly reached it, when not far to 
his left a sound arose—a neigh. 

Down he crouched, mouse-still, waiting, and presently 
again the neigh come from the same place. 

He saw that, since there was a horse, if he could capture 
it, mount it in the canes, and dash out and away on it, that 
might be well: and on hands and knees he crept that way, 
keenly peering. 

Presently he became aware of the breath of a horse, then 
saw it eating at the canes, and then, near the horse, caught 
sight of a man lying blanched and unconscious, a rifle be¬ 
side him. 

When Cobby bent over him, he discovered that Macray had 
been struck in the left patella; and now his shouts for Sueela 
began to sound through the canes, till she came brushing 
through. 

Her nose wrinkled with repulsion at Macray; and when, 
after lifting, they laid him down, her stretched fingers shrank 
from off him, as if to finger him was filthy. 

Having got him out of the cane and upon the nag, Cobby 
with difficulty fixed him by means of part of the nag’s rein, 
and, after making fast the remainder of it to the motor, moved 
slowly on, towing him. But halfway to Eshowe Macray 
came out of his faint, and in a sick voice sang out: “Hallo, 
baas; hallo, Black Sue; where you taking me to? I don’t 
want to go to Eshowe”—but got no answer. 

As they entered Eshowe near one o’clock they saw the awna 
all populous, and from all quarters swarmed a multitude to 
gloat over the motor, to greet Sueela, to gape at Macray, and 
to call out the news of war declared in the awna at noon by 
the Queen, who had accused Sebingwe of malignity, flung 
down the glove, and sent back the Wo-Mashenya embassy 
with gage of battle. 

Wild with excitement were all eyes, and it was with pelting 


NIGHT-RIDE 


243 


steps to go to the sigodhlo that Sueela left Cobby near the 
market, he with Macray now going westward to Macray’s hut, 
where, while he waited for the turning up of his surgical- 
case, he said distantly to Macray: “What in God’s name 
have I done to you that you should shoot at me? I hope 
you haven’t got ‘malevolence-of-the-insane.” 

“Baas,” Macray said from his deck-chair, “you struck me, 
you know, you chloroformed me. No man may take such 
liberties with me. But it wasn’t you I wanted to get, it was 
that strumpet.” 

And he said again when the leg was being made aseptic: 
“Where’s the good, inkoos? There’s been a rumpus between 
that Flora Macray and me: she’ll have me dead before sun¬ 
set.” 

“She will do nothing of the kind,” Cobby answered, “for 
I shouldn’t suffer it.” 

“Oh, you aren’t a bad old baas. . . . But don’t think you 
can stop her; the bitch’ll have her will, if she lives.” 

Cobby had half-chloroformed him, and then, eating melons 
for a meal, hung on at the hut: for since his trained hands 
had no special training in surgery, he was flurried and nerv¬ 
ous there, and made himself nurse as well as surgeon. 

In the midst of which ministries, in rushed one of Mac- 
ray’s men to tell that some men were coming with a stretcher 
to take Macray; and in some moments Cobby saw five giants 
coming up the bush-approach to the hut: on which he stepped 
out to confront them. 

One of them mentioned that they came to take Sir Caray 
to “The Elephant”; whereupon Cobby: “Oh, but that’s out 
of the question. Surely you know that the man’s leg is frac¬ 
tured: ‘The Elephant’ may kill him. You will be good 
enough to wait, until I see the Queen and explain.” 

The negroes glanced at one another and grinned. 

“We not come to wait,” one said. 

Cobby now flushed in his hot way, saying: “Oh, but you 

99 

are . 


244 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“We not ” 

“You are —You have to do as you are told.” 

Now from out of the hut sounded: “Baas, it’s no good!” 

Of which Cobby took no notice, but said in another tone 
to the men: “How can you be so inhuman? White men are 
framed with the same infirmities and require the same mercies 
as yourselves. I will see the Queen-” 

“Come, clear out, Sir Cobby,” one interrupted with some 
roughness, “you make us cross.” 

On which another flush rushed up Cobby’s forehead, and 
now, drawing his revolver, he said: “Whoever first enters 
this hut will be shot.” 

Again the negroes grinned with one another, and now laid 
down the stretcher, while one of them went running out of 
the grounds through a crowd that had come in from the near 
street to see the thing through. 

Then ten minutes of suspense—babble, jocularities, from 
the mob, expostulations from Macray, from the men, who 
pointed out that they were but obeying orders: Cobby stood, 
revolver in hand; and when the one who had run out returned 
at a trot with a body of some thirty, Cobby with his revolver 
marked a mark on the path, beyond which to put a foot was 
to be shot. 

This made deadlock. The negroes grinned; none wished 
to be shot; none thought of retreat. Then one ventured to 
protrude a toe over the mark—pretending negligence; and 
Cobby saw it, and knew that it was not done in negligence, 
and did not shoot—as Napoleon would have shot, as Crom¬ 
well; but Cobby was not Cromwell—higher type, less effi¬ 
cient anon as to the special little end, enormously more 
efficient, in a more complex cosmos, as to the general busi¬ 
ness of living in a cosmos—Cromwell, Napoleon, being hardly 
so much as conscious of a cosmos, imagining that God is a 
Baptist, a Girondin; but He is an electro-chemist. 

And then at once the frogs hopped upon the log—they 
rushed him; and he, having one bullet, could well have shot 



NIGHT-RIDE 


245 


somebody then, but—did not. He was pretty roughly dealt 
with; and the only result—to the eye —for the time —of his 
intervention was that he lost a revolver, which he never got 
again. Accompanied by him, Macray was taken away, a piti¬ 
able enough poor man, come upon misfortune, and pretty 
obviously on the road to ruin. He was put into a punt at 
the edge of “The Elephant” pool where, as they parted, the 
two shook hands. 


XXXII 


THE WAGGONS 

M EANWHILE with pelting steps Sueela sped to the 
Queen’s, and with keen expectancy peeped into the 
hut—no open arms there, only the new favourite, 
who started up to tell that Spiciewegiehotiu was farther in 
the wood, where some waggons were, and ran to show the 
way with Sueela, whose forerunning heart and sprinting feet 
outstripped her. 

The waggons were in a glade shut within jungle, with them 
the Queen and four men, who were making fuel-heaps under 
them: and there stood Sueela, eager, suspended, a gazelle that 
grinned, a grace awaiting her welcome, until the Queen 
turned her head a little to observe: “Oh, you come.” 

“My goodness. . . .” 

“What you come for?” 

“Come for? You not send for me?” 

“Me? No.” 

Sueela, averted, eyed alternately the earth and the sky, 
and within her neck the world ached. 

“All right, my girl. . . . What me done to you, Spicie¬ 
wegiehotiu?” 

“To me? You not done anything. ... So you just come? 
You get here quick. You liked the ride, no?” 

“Yes, me and Sir Cobby come tearing on a carriage with 
only two wheels, and no horses! Sir Cobby say the horses 
inside.” 

“Eheh, me hear all about it. Sir Cobby know a lot: but 
he not know everything.” 

“Oh, Spiciewegiehotiu. ... So this is what me dream of 
246 


THE WAGGONS 247 

all night, this is what me fly to. . . . Me go. . . . Good 
health.” 

“Where you go to?” 

“Me go back to my Kingdom.” 

“When me tell you to? or before?” 

“Oh, me not belong to you now, my girl!” 

“Who you belong to? To—Sir Cobby?” 

Sueela eyed her with a weighing underlook. “Me belong 
to myself. Me a Queen like you. You think you can treat 
me cruel like this? No, me not love you any more.” 

“You ever loved me?” 

“Oh, no, never! Never ten times more than my own—” 
here her voice weakened, and Spiciewegiehotiu, still averted, 
turned her head at her to say: “Yes, cry: you think, if you 
cry, me cry, too.” 

Whereupon Sueela laughed across a sob: “You crying, 
my girl!” 

And Spiciewegiehotiu, with working nostrils, laughed also: 
“Oh, you silly thing!” 

Upon which their hands, magnetized, found out each other, 
and Sueela drew her. And presently Spiciewegiehotiu: 
“Come—You hungry?” 

“Eheh.” 

“Come”—and off in a flutter they dashed chattering, Spicie¬ 
wegiehotiu calling over her shoulder to the men to go on 
making the fuel-heaps under the waggons, which she had 
brought over from Cobby’s park the previous evening, in¬ 
tending to burn them then; but, on learning the wild tidings 
of Cobby’s bicycle flying down the kotla, had paused, reflect¬ 
ing that that bicycle might be the very means of Cobby’s 
threatened escape, and that, if she fired the waggons at once, 
then Cobby, on finding out, might, in his “mad anger,” pre¬ 
dicted by Macray, at once fly off on the bicycle: so she had 
decided to wait a day, acquire the bicycle also, then fire all. 

“But you going to burn his waggons?” Sueela with a 
start asked on the way to the hut. 


248 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“What’s that to you?” Spiciewegiehotiu answered, stop¬ 
ping. 

“Nothing!—my goodness.” But inwardly appalled for 
Cobby, and knowing that pleading would be useless, she 
added with a quick use of wit: “But you found out what 
all the different things good for?” 

“No, me not found out; me neglect it. . . . Let them go. 
Me not want a subject in Wo-Ngwanya more powerful than 
his sovereign.” 

“Me see. . . . But, my goodness, you not wait and find out 
first, and then burn them? Maybe some of them good for the 
war.” 

This touched Spiciewegiehotiu in a tender spot. “Maybe,” 
she muttered, “me will see.” They went on. 

At the hut-door the new Queen’s pet was expelled, and 
within the hut the two spent the afternoon in communion as 
in the old days, alone but for an intrusion of the sybil and 
the executioner-brother, until Cobby arrived hot on his bi¬ 
cycle, straight from bidding farewell to Macray at the brink 
of “The Elephant” lake, he entering saying: “So after 
all my pains there is to be this war.” 

“Well, whose fault?” asked Spiciewegiehotiu, looking up 
from the floor: “Sebingwe’s! You say so yourself!” 

“Oh, very well, keep on! Some day you will be defeated, 
and taste that flavour.” 

She snapped her fingers. “Oh, me never defeated! If me 
defeated the first and second day, me look to it, and win the 
third. Even if you not fight with me. But this time you 
fight.” 

“Well, I am not pleased. I begged you-” 

“Why you not pleased? You say you come back at half¬ 
way to noon. Me wait till noon—you not come-” 

“I was retarded. I come with a bullet-wound in my 
arm-” 

“Me know. Caray never shoot at you any more.” 

“No, he never will, I am sure,” he answered strongly, 





249 


THE WAGGONS 

“whatever chance he may have, for there are other forces 
than constables and rifles and rods of iron; and I come to 
plead for that poor man. He is not in a fit state to be in 
‘Thd Elephant’—I supplicate you to let him out till, at all 
events, he is well.” 

Smiling steadily up into his face, she answered: “Me will 
see.” 

“Good. When?” 

“Soon.” 

“Why not now?” 

“No: soon.” 

“Very well: that is a promise. . . . Well, Sueela? Home 
again?” 

“Eheh,” says Sueela contentedly—and then sighed. 

“What that thing is you bring her on?” Spiciewegiehotiu 
now demanded. 

“It is called a bicycle . . . . Just outside”—he hav¬ 
ing brought it into the grounds from being mobbed and 
pawed. 

“You show it to me, no? and all those things in your wag¬ 
gons?” 

“Very well, some day”—an answer made ten times before. 

“No, now,” she said. 

“Very well, now.” 

On which she sprang up, saying: “Wait—me soon come 
back,” and, running out, put finger on her lips to Sueela, and 
flew to the waggons to tell the men to remove the fuel quick 
from under them. 

Meantime Cobby was saying to Sueela: “Well, here you 
are safe—what a ride last night! winds, and forests, and soli¬ 
tary rivers wandering along; and then that ordeal in those 
canes. Aren’t you sleepy? I am now.” 

“No, me could do it again tonight and tomorrow night, and 
not sleep,” she told him. 

“You excellent thing! And you have done her good al¬ 
ready, I think. Does she love you just as before?” 


250 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

“Eheh.” Then she sighed; and suddenly covered her eyes 
to say: “But she not love me long.” 

“Not? Why?” 

“Because me give her to you.” 

He stood over her. “How, Sueela? Tell me.” 

“Me take her throne from her: then she go with you. She 
think that, if she beat Sebingwe, victory give her power to 
marry you; but she wrong: me know the Wa-Ngwanya—they 
not like you—they not stand a white King—not for long. 
And she think if she marry you, her breasts satisfy you; but 
she wrong: me know you; you not want to stay; if she make 
you stay, you hate her. She think she can work out what 
she want, but me sure she can’t—even if she beat Sebingwe. 
So she not beat Sebingwe: me make Sebingwe beat her.” 

Cobby stood pale—scared! then, looking on the ground, 
paced once the length of the room, anew assailed by tempta¬ 
tion. But he had undertaken to be done with any more 
scheming to force the Queen away, and he chuckled uneasily, 
making the lame, and not too true, remark: “I am afraid I 
don’t understand. . . .” 

Sueela’s forehead was dropped quite down; there just 
reached him from her a moan of “Wo-Ngwanya! my land!” 
and she raised strained wild eyes to say to him: “Then you 
love me well, no? Me do a lot, a lot, for you.” 

“Oh, Sueela, be quiet,” he cried, stamping about with that 
energetic action of his elbows: “I don’t—I won’t—under¬ 
stand you. Daisy has nothing to do-” 

“Sh-h-h, she come back. And about your waggons,—lis¬ 
ten; look after your waggons-” 

This in just a whisper pitched to reach his ear, but he, 
astonished, cried out “Waggons!” and then saw Spiciewegie- 
hotiu’s face in the doorway looking from one to the other of 
them. 

Some moments of dumbness followed, deeply awkward 
for Sueela, who had promised to tell nothing of the fate 
overhanging the waggons, till Cobby came out with: “Well, 



THE WAGGONS 251 

now, come, I will show you my wonders”—and stepped out. 

He had made some steps down the avenue when the Queen 
with a sheepish half-laugh remarked: “The waggons in 
here!” 

“My waggons?” He was all astonishment. “Why in 
here?” 

For safety—she explained, now looking him straight in 
the face: rumours of menaces made by the mob to burn the 
waggons had reached her ears: so, for safety- 

Cobby was very perturbed. “Why should they bum my 
waggons? What groundless people! They would never 
burn anything else!”—a statement whose significance Spicie- 
wegiehotiu did not grasp, nor properly hear it, being now 
preoccupied over the motor that leaned on a baobab near 
the hut; and “come, show me!” she said; but now he was 
cross and sub-anxious, and, the teacher’s impulse failing, he 
merely made them get on, and, sandwiched between hams, 
rode them exclamatory up and down the avenue, a happy man 
as to woman’s arms. 

Dismounting in a flush, Spiciewegiehotiu asked: “So where 
you put it now?” and when he answered “with the waggons, 
I suppose,” she made a secret grimace of glee. However, she 
now no more designed to fire, but to hide it. “It good! It 
good!” she cried: “there is only Cobby.” 

Thence they went to the waggons, whence fuel and fuel- 
heapers had now vanished; and Cobby languidly told what 
this or that was, but, in general, without effect on their intelli¬ 
gence, the objects having been invented by a different type, 
on a different plane, of Mind, and to attempt to explain them 
was as though a seraph ranted of astral mathematics to a 
man, and lalled. “What this is?” Spiciewegiehotiu kept on 
asking, but without gathering much fruit. When she pointed 
to an accumulator, Cobby could not begin to think how to 
tell of it: he himself could but little understand that manifesta¬ 
tion. 

Discontent that the waggons were there, his arm smarting, 


252 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

wearied out and sleepy, he was cross and short; conscious that 
he was wasting breath. “That in the cans is named petrol — 
these are named bombs —on this thing one can fly”—words 
falling like hail upon tin. But there was one thing which 
the Queen’s instinct and interest fixed on quick and keen— 
the machine-gun: just the word “gun” woke her alertness; 
and though he hesitated to explain or exhibit its action, as 
sudden darkness had now come, and she could hardly any 
longer see the business of his fingers, he shot the gun, to 
astonish her with those gushes of passion with which it spat 
and published its bullets. 

At which Spiciewegiehotiu’s eyes also spat fire; she under¬ 
stood that it was “good”; and she decided then not to fire 
the waggons until the war was all ended, dreading that, if 
she fired at once, after taking out the gun, Cobby in his 
anger might refuse to use for her this victorious tool: she be¬ 
ing sensitive as to offending him just then. 

So there the waggons remained during nearly two weeks, 
doomed, but respited; and, meantime, during five days of 
storm-winds and wet-weather, all in the air was war, war: 
again the same fever and fierceness against Sebingwe as ere- 
while against Daisy; once more everywhere, every moment, 
that dumb music of the boom and rumble of drums that stub¬ 
bornly bumped and bumped, movements of troops, a mood 
of revolution, of holiday, and hell-broken-loose, mock-battles, 
kerries, cracked bones in the kotla, blasphemous dancing be¬ 
fore God, sex gone dog-mad, goggling, haggard, howling, 
while the nurseling’s mouth turned down with rueing to cry, 
and the rueing eye of the old threw a look at the sky. 

As to Cobby, he was once more drilling the rifle-companies, 
he being now the most miserable of men, fixed in the bitterest 
dilemma, knowing somewhere within him that he did not 
mean to lead the riflemen into fight, that this time again he 
was going to fail the Queen, and, failing her, must die of 
shame and meanness. Of Sueela he had seen little more, no 
more for any discussion, she having hurried back to M’Niami 


THE WAGGONS 


253 


on the third day of her visit; and two afternoons afterwards 
Spiciewegiehotiu in a small squad of horse left Eshowe north¬ 
westward for the war, one of her last acts on departing being 
to dig up that goblet of poisoned entree, which like foie gras 
of Provence she had buried, and to send it to “The Ele¬ 
phant.” 


XXXIII 


THE BANKNOTES 

L IKE a man in a bath far too hot for man was Cobby 
now; and his bosom was a moan. He had said that 
Sebingwe was in the wrong; had promised to fight 
Sebingwe; whereupon had come upon him Sueela with her 
scheme to defeat and dethrone the Queen, and, in the rush 
of the temptation of it, he, instead of stamping promptly upon 
it, had said “I don’t understand”—though it was easy to 
understand; and before he could recover himself, Spicie- 
wegiehotiu had come back upon them. 

The next noon he had hung about the back of the royal 
park, at a spot once given him as a rendezvous by Sueela— 
hoping to see Sueela, to forbid her scheme; but, as she had 
not appeared, he had sent to invite her to his hut, to which 
she had gone—accompanied by Spiciewegiehotiu; and the 
next day had departed for M’Niami. 

That she meant Daisy’s impis to fight on Sebingwe’s side 
was pretty evident, she relying upon Cobby not to fight against 
the troops which she sent into battle for his good—and, in 
fact, Cobby saw that, under the circumstances, for him to slay 
one of those men would certainly be murder. Hence the tor¬ 
ment of the horns that tossed him—Sueela relying upon him 
not to fight as confidently as the Queen upon him to fight. 
Even after he knew of Sueela’s scheme, after Sueela’s depar¬ 
ture for M’Niami, when the Queen had wished to be assured 
that he would use the machine-gun, he could discover noth¬ 
ing to say but “I suppose so.” 

She, noting the groan and agony in his manner, had pon- 
254 


255 


THE BANKNOTES 

dered gravely upon him, vaguely troubled; for, a little before 
this, the doctoress, with a forehead all crosses, and a bosom 
all forebodings, had been closeted with her, imploring her to 
postpone the war. 

Cobby also had implored; had even said: “Suppose Daisy 
joins Sebingwe?” 

But at this she had smiled. “That’s nonsense. What me 
have Sueela in M’Niami for? If one M’Niami man fight 
against Wo-Ngwanya, Sueela have off his head.” 

Cobby had groaned; had said: “Still, Sebingwe and Daisy 
are natural allies, since you have made them equally nerv¬ 
ous of your aims”—but he could see that, unless he revealed 
to her Sueela’s scheme “against” her (as she would say), 
revealed Sueela’s secret committed to him, no reason would 
cause her to pause—if pause was still possible, for rumours 
of forward movements of enemy bodies were already abroad. 
“And to be a party to her disaster!” he writes at this time, 
“for, unless I use the guns, there is no possibility of her 
contending against the impis of Sebingwe and Daisy together. 
And for me to bring her to grief and ignominy, to see her bril¬ 
liant spirit broken, her glory gone, her throne torn from her, 
and then to say to her, ‘it is for your good, now come with 
me’—lies and nonsense. Why is it for her good? Lies and 
nonsense! Our civilization is no doubt fated to attain to 
mountain-tops and sing a hymn, but undoubtedly at the mo¬ 
ment it is a sufficiently repulsive bundle of rubbish, blood, 
and pus, with its lubber ‘nobles,’ its ‘ lords’ and commons, the 
lords commoner than the commons, and the commons so com¬ 
mon, with its little ‘lord-bishops,’ all starch and lawn-sleeves, 
whited to hide the tatters and lice beneath, bribed to bleat to 
the rabble their feeble blasphemies of Matabeleland—for not 
much money! offensive little men: she is quite right, I think, 
to like and respect a Mo-Ngwanya more than Macray; and 
it is because I want her—it is for my good—that like Iscariot 
I am betraying her to rack and cross, not for ‘her good.’ 
What shall I do? What, in God’s name, can a poor man do? 


256 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

If I had only known when Sueela was leaving, I might have 
ridden after, taken her apart from her escort, and bidden 
her give up the idea; but, being at the gun-practice, I only 
knew hours after; and to follow her on the motor would have 
been equivalent to ‘giving her away’ to the Queen; so I de¬ 
cided to send my Sansiwana, and at nine last night he started 
on my Ali for M’Niami with the message ‘Do not, I beg’—a 
step of which the Queen is quite sure to hear; and done too 
late, I know. Tomorrow, she is off for the war, taking my 
soul with her; when I am to follow has not been told me; 
nor, so far, anything done as to Macray—I now doubt 
whether she intends to free him, ever, although I have again 
today begged, and again been given hope. Her abominable 
obduracy sets my blood boiling, and, if she falls, it is just 
that they that use the sword shall perish by the sword. She 
has mocked my admonishments and gone her way: well, let 
her: but, God, let me not once see those eyes weep, for I 
die. . . . Yes, I will fight Sebingwe: that is my decision now; 
but I will not—cannot—let a shot be aimed by my order at 
a man of Daisy’s. . . 

The following afternoon Spiciewegiehotiu left Eshowe, and 
shortly afterwards Cobby got marching-orders—unexpectedly, 
there being still several regiments bivouacked in the awna; 
but he was probably sent quickly away because Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu did not wish him to know then of the doom prepared 
by her for Macray. 

Cobby passed beyond “The Elephant” that midnight, and 
camped in moonlight within sight of its western cliffs; but 
the following morning when all was ready for marching, he 
did not march—sat on a stone alone, smoking the forenoon 
away, though he never smoked till late in the day; saw two 
bodies of troops move past, and still sat moody, though under 
orders to be at a particular spot before sunset. 

Another meal was eaten there; it was near noon before he 
moved; and he had not marched two leagues farther when 


257 


THE BANKNOTES 

a big man beating a pigmy mule was seen galloping in the 
rear to catch up the troop. He brought for Cobby a message 
from the “Guardian of the Sad” (Sinder-ngabya) : Sir Caray 
was dying; wanted to see Sir Cobby. The “Guardian of the 
Sad” knew that Sir Cobby could not go, but, in comparison, 
had promised to send the message. 

As when water is forced uphill, then with lavish wash at 
the first chance and turn hurtles into descent, so Cobby turned 
back at that call, this being escape and hiding-place for him, 
if but for a time. He announced that he was bound to go, 
would be back, put a lieutenant in command, sending a mes¬ 
sage to Spiciewegiehotiu as to why, and with a guide galloped 
off. 

Before sunset he was in a room of “The Elephant” with 
Macray, who hailed him with, “Well, baas, here we are,” and 
did not look like a dying man in the shine of two torches 
there, though shortly afterwards he was taken with a spasm 
(tonic), when in the passion of death he arrantly railed like 
an arch, until tonic merged into clonic, he then jerking him¬ 
self like earthquake, with a working of the feet that beat 
together at the great-toes, trembling like trembling-bells. 

This happened from time to time: but in the intervals he 
was lucid, garrulous, nay, gay, or mock-gay, anon, so that 
Cobby could not but recognize the gameness and invulnerable 
toughness wherewith this fellow confronted the grey and gulf 
of death, though already in his gullet, ever and again, a hic¬ 
cup clicked, tinkling, piteous. . . . 

Cobby fancied that what he saw was tetanus, but Macray 
said: “The knee has nothing— hie !—to do with it! Knee 
was getting well; but this noon a new food—a stew—was 
given me—nice, too; and ten minutes afterwards I knew 
she’d poisoned me.” 

“Shame, oh, shame, she promised . . .” mourned from 
Cobby. 

“It’s only fair,” Macray said: “woe to the conquered it is; 


258 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

I wasn’t smart enough. Whereas strength is what God hon¬ 
ours in a lion, what He honours in a man is wit—cares noth¬ 
ing for the man’s piety, but applauds his wit-” 

“You know nothing of the matter,” Cobby replied: “the 
pious receive from Him joys which you do not conceive, hear¬ 
ing a voice sweeter than choirs of sirens.” 

“Well, that may be so: joys to the pious, but to the witty 
He gives life, and if your pious lad isn’t smart enough, or 
slips where taxis are passing, He’ll cut him short off—not a 
theory, that—matter of fact. Hence I’m here, because she’s 
smarter than I, as I freely admit now. I’ve pumped the 
warder, and I think I’ve been poisoned with some of that 

very stew that I poisoned for the lot of you-” 

“That— you —poisoned ? ” 

“Who else, baas?” 

On which Cobby’s paleness rushed to red, he, in a voice 
tremulous with emotion, uttering: “Oh, you abominable vil¬ 
lain, Douglas Macray!” 

“Now, hark at this,” Macray muttered: “you might keep 
your hair on, inkoos. You and I aren’t so very unequal: you 
have a trained brain— hid —and I haven’t; but, to make up, 
mine was born the stronger, I think. Why the horror? My 
uncle, James Macray, by some trick on slave-labour, which 
the so-called ‘laws’ create by recognizing the claim of some 
individuals to ‘own’ the earth’s crust, contrived to acquire 
seven million pounds’ worth of the limited wealth of a nation, 
to which fact was due the deaths of hundreds, or thousands, 
of men, women, and children: that’s a fact; if a man said to 
me, ‘I didn’t know that,’ I’d tell him, ‘Then, you’re out of it, 
old chap—born that way.’ You, anyway, know it, baas: yet 
you don’t look too wildly horrified at that slaughter of whites 
by the uncle in a white waistcoat, but are horrified because, in 
order to enjoy the seven millions, the nephew in a belt at¬ 
tempts, and fails, to kill just seven niggers, one white-nigger 
bitch, and, God forgive me, one good baas. Well, that’s cant, 
of course: that’s not scientist eyes, inkoos. So, if you-” 





THE BANKNOTES 259 

/ 

“You the nephew of James Macray?” Cobby broke in, all 
lost in astonishment. 

“Never even suspected. . . . Simple Simon, the scientist. 
We are cousins, baas: I have you here to give you the seven 
millions. Don’t you remember how you used to ask me 
where the deuce you’d seen my face? You’d never seen it, 
I think, but had no doubt seen a photograph in some maga¬ 
zine—only with a beard. That Master R. K. Rolls spotted me 
at once that evening I tossed away those false teeth; and 
your belief in my story that a lion ate Rolls has made the 
ghost of that gentleman feel deeply aggrieved. No lion dined 
on that great hunter before the devil, but I dined. He at¬ 
tacked me on the way to Eshowe; and we were tied together 
on a ledge over a precipice, when I, jumping to a lower 
ledge, pulled him, cut the cord, and the immortal element 
of him vaulted straight to hell—didn’t stop at the bottom— 
his body stopped—but his soul kept straight on down. Oh, 
Christ, another gripe coming ... !” 

By this time, after each seizure and paroxysm, the dying 
man was being appreciably weakened, racked nearer to de¬ 
feat; but it was not till the sun was glorious the next day out¬ 
side that home of gloom, that his vigorous frame gave in to the 
antagonist in the last grim round of that ring and wrangle, 
and the agony lapsed into placidity. And all that time Cobby 
bided at his side. He told Cobby during the night that if “the 
bitch” (Spiciewegiehotiu) had followed Cobby to Europe, she 
would have found herself poor, since he, before he left Europe, 
had resolved that she should never enjoy the fortune, whatever 
“the law” ordered; so he had realized all that he could of it, 
nearly the whole, in notes of the Bank of England, Dres- 
dener Bank, Bank of France, mostly £1000 English notes, all 
which he had brought with him in a common cardboard box, 
and had lately buried hardly half a yard deep on the east 
side of the well beside his hut, together with the photograph 
stolen by him from the Queen. 

“And you shouldn’t have it, baas,” he said to Cobby, “if 


260 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

I wasn’t sure that you’ll never get that bitch to go with you. 
If the dead can bring evil upon the living— hie! —I’ll bring 
it upon her: hateful cat, I never hated as I hate that cat. And 
tell Black Sue, too, to look out: if I can drag the harlot after 
me, I will, and we’ll have it hot down there. And you, too— 
you struck me—damn you for that, man; but then you stuck 
to me—elevated to disdain and aid the hand that aimed at 
your heart. When you defended me from being brought here, 
I thought T’d like to be cultured and innocent like him.’ Now 
you are a king—rightful—not like me. This is the one kindly 
thing I ever did, to make you a king. Life! rum thing. I 
think if I had it to live again, I’d pan it out different. Science 
—you are right: that’s the thing: I’d train my brain to see 
God, and be blind to Maxim’s. . . . God, it’s coming—the 
deepness of this disease in me—you wouldn’t believe, all’s 
wrong in me—oh, won’t you give me the revolver? Cobby 
give —I give you millions, I buy it, that’s fair—you prig, you 

English thing, in spite of science- Ach, now I got it— 

by the frantic cross of- Help! hell! . . .” It was noon 

before Cobby stepped out of “The Elephant” pool, and, in¬ 
stead of then at once hastening to overtake his companies, he, 
still skulking in this hiding-place from perplexity, decided to 
go to Macray’s hut, where he dug up the box of notes, only 
to bury it again; then at last with his guide galloped off for 
the fighting, knowing of a wild rumour then raging like fire 
through Eshowe that Daisy had invaded Wo-Ngwanya. 




XXXIV 


CALAMITY 

T HE actual possession of “a kingdom”—or empire, say 
—an effect upon Cobby’s psychology. This wealth, 
Spiciewegiehotiu’s by “law,” had, on being so buried, 
been lost to her as much as if sunk in a ship, a misfortune 
which, once accomplished, no “law,” nor law-officers, can 
alter. Cobby had recovered it through being what he was: 
now it was his: and he proceeded to dream dreams. Now he 
could found and endow in England, now flout the lousy little 
scowlers at schools and foes of wisdom—was a king with 
king’s counsel as before, but now with six kings’ power. This 
subtly affected him—increased, for one thing, his greed to be 
gone for England, and to be gone not alone, but with another: 
for the lucky feel aggrieved if they still need something, and 
are not completely lucky, as Macray had attempted to kill 
several “niggers,” since he lacked cigars: so now with Cobby. 
The wings of his new power were an irritant and nuisance to 
him in that, having them, he was denied the right instantly 
to fly with them; it was a cross to him that his aeroplane 
could not take a passenger, so that like a shah of the air he 
might be off at once with Spiciewegiehotiu: for his seventh 
million erected him to a Sabbath serenity of establishment 
and majesty, and the fact that not she, but he, was the million¬ 
aire made a chemical change in his relation to her (though 
he would have denied), promoted him to a new dominance 
and authority, hardened his heart (though he would have 
denied) : and whereas he had decided to fight for her against 
Sebingwe, though not against Daisy, he now decided to fight 

261 


262 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

against no one. “Her own fault,” he said: “if she must fall, 
she must: then to comfort her.” 

He made no great haste to “the front”: after galloping 
some way through a gale, went slow. . . . 

That morning of storm the Wo-Ngwanya army, after cross¬ 
ing the frontier northward into Wo-Mashenya territory, had 
come into touch with the enemy; then had smartly marched 
back for Wo-Ngwanya: upon which Sebingwe, a lean colos¬ 
sus, with a renown for feats of prowess and conduct in war, 
had hotly followed. 

There is a valley a mile wide, quite flat, lying within hills 
white atop with dolomite—hills east, west, and south—and on 
it two woods within which are villages, round these being 
fields of millet, dark-green maize, groundnuts; and, flowing 
northward close under the westhills, the river Perihompya, a 
home of hippos: in which valley, called Spicieweija, or White 
Valley, Sebingwe caught up with Spiciewegiehotiu, and a 
battle was fought. 

Spiciewegiehotiu having there spent the previous day, her 
reason for advancing and then retreating, drawing Sebingwe 
after her, was that the battlefield might be one which she 
had chosen; moreover, since, to her astonishment and dismay, 
the rifles had not arrived, she desired to delay the engage¬ 
ment, and, awaiting their arrival, only engaged the foe when 
forced to. 

The battle began about noon, Sebingwe, with his son, anon 
watching it from an ant-heap at the valley’s centre, and anon 
himself speeding like the storm with an umkonto , or broad 
spear (for stabbing), on a frantic little horse which, with 
prancings and kickings like a rocking-horse, snatched him off 
into the throng of things; while Spiciewegiehotiu sat at the 
doorway of a hut built on piles in some timber nigh the 
southern hills, her feet planted on the back of her Selim, she 
munching nuts with her molars, anon calling something to 
a knot of men who stood close below her, anon using her 
field-glass, ever engaged in trying to keep her thighs modestly 



263 


CALAMITY 

covered, for the storm wafted all below, as above its blasts 
wafted streams of green pigeons gadding, streams of black 
geese voyaging, from which far aloft noised down callings, 
voices as of laughter and roistering at the vastness of their 
hilarity, at the excess of their heaven, the milk of the King¬ 
dom of their elysium; and down anon washed a shower, sharp 
and short, adding to freshness and strangeness of wind, fresh¬ 
ness and strangeness of water, during which the two war-hosts 
fought on in a home of “holy haze” of Homer, which the 
gaze failed to investigate. 

Spiciewegiehotiu wantonly munched nuts with her molars, 
constantly covered her legs with her reluctant kaross, which, 
pegged to one leg, got fluttering free from the other in a 
frolic of mockery, she recovering a knee, it recovering free¬ 
dom to stream and strum; and she sent messages to a group 
a few hundred yards nearer the struggling hosts; and she 
laughed a little with the winds, and with her staff of officers; 
for, accustomed since the age of twelve to watch and esti¬ 
mate battles, she was in her element, had a certain joy in 
battle, like a person employed with confident competence on 
work which in early boyhood was his choice and hobby; and, 
though annoyed, disappointed, perplexed, at the non-arrival 
of the rifles, she expected them, every few minutes throwing 
her eye to see the rifles come through a declivity of the southern 
hills to her right. 

Sebingwe, for his part, had some rifles, and was firing 
them: so, though the Wa-Ngwanya were in rather greater 
number, for some time the struggle remained indecisive, un¬ 
til Spiciewegiehotiu gave an order in the midst of a storm 
of rain, whereupon a fleet of tree-trunks, cut down the previ¬ 
ous day, rushed down the river, taking a regiment. To her 
the mind , or morale , of fighters was always a matter of 
high importance, she having no small confidence in the ef¬ 
fect of astonishment and shock upon the mentality of men 
locked in conflict: nor in this case was she mistaken. The 
river having high sides, calcarious tufa on clay shale, with 


264 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

mimosa bush at its edges, the regiment floated a long way 
down before it was noted, and its advent upon the flank of 
the conflict produced if not a rout, a profound result. When 
the rain-storm wandered off elsewhither, Spiciewegiehotiu, 
gazing through her glass at the struggle, muttered to herself: 
“Sebingwe done.” 

This, however, was not what she wanted—wanted the war 
to be won by the rifles and machine-gun: and now occurred 
in her a tug-of-war between two alternatives—to win at once 
—or to wait for the rifles, and have all as she had planned it. 
Estimating close and careful, her judgment held the scales; 
and on the jump of this pull of judgment hung her doom. 
At this time no sign of any danger from Daisy had arisen 
on her horizon—no tinge of suspicion of such a thing—or 
there would have been no indecision: she would pretty surely 
have whipped Sebingwe at once, and then Daisy, in detail. 
Still, she decided rightly: to fight out the fight now; but 
then in a minute went white at a fresh decision, dropped in 
an impulse upon her horse, and dashed off herself to the 
general staff, to order a retreat to be beaten. 

It seemed to all that some fly had stung her! When all 
along the battle-front the Wo-Ngwanya drums began to thump 
retirement, every one was surprised, none more than Sebingwe, 
who, already in retreat, readily enough permitted the re¬ 
treat of his enemy, and quickly became pigmy northward. 

Then two hours passed. The “doctors” were over the 
wounded, rank-and-file were setting up a stockade, the Queen 
with her staff was seated at a meal of goat on the ground 
under her hut, the sun at three o’clock flying white to treat 
with mobs of oncoming storm-cloud, when a horse bathed 
in sweat came tearing through the southern hills. 

The rider brought the tidings that the army of M’Niami 
was marching upon Eshowe. . . . 

“You mad, no, man?” Spiciewegiehotiu asked him; and 
tasted no more food that day. 

And she asked: “You see the rifles coming?” 


CALAMITY 265 

To which he answered that the rifles were not far beyond 
the hills. 

She stood up then to move slowly away into the wood in 
a world that had turned turtle, dizzied, incapable of belief, 
of disbelief, of any realization. Her lips breathed 
“Sueela” . . . 

She ran back presently to give an order as to two regi¬ 
ments left in Eshowe, to bid them rush to her, then again 
walked out to be alone. 


XXXV 


CRASH 

N OW she saw the rifles arrive, but could not descry 
Cobby; saw a rifleman making enquiries as to her 
whereabouts, and then racing toward her. She ran, 
calling to him: “Me here!” and before he could speak 
asked: “Where Sir Cobby is?” 

“Sir Cobby not with us, Bayete,” he said: “the Guardian 

of the Sad send to tell Sir Cobby Sir Caray dying- 9 

Her eyes closed in pain. 

“Then Sir Cobby go back. He say he come on later . . . 
You hear, Bayete, about Daisy?” 

“Yes. Have you with you a kind of stand-up gun from 
Sir Cobby’s waggons?” 

“No, Bayete, nothing: only rifles.” 

“Sir Cobby have with him that kind of gun?” 

“No, Bayete, nothing: only his rifle.” 

“Oh, but you sure?” she asked with appeal. 

“Bayete, me sure!” 

Silence; her gaze on the ground; then suddenly: “Why 
you so late?” 

He answered: “Yesterday from morning to noon we not 
march; we stand still. Everybody wait: Sir Cobby not give 
any order.” 

“Why he not give any order?” 

“Bayete, me not know!” 

“What Sir Cobby doing all that time?” 

“He sit alone on a stone and smoke.” 

A rush of blood flushed her brow; she screamed at him: 
“Go way!” 


266 




CRASH 


267 


Presently she let herself drop down within an old matsura 
tree-trunk, where she sat paralysed a long time, while mes¬ 
sengers of Job on blown horses washed in foam, messenger 
after messenger, came upon her, to declare how Daisy was 
there or was there, was firing kraal after kraal with frantic 
licence, was driving the affrighted tribesmen into wildness of 
flight before his unbridled hordes, was twenty miles from 
Eshowe—not Daisy himself, it appeared, who was said to be 
sick, but his Queen Sueela, a Wo-Ngwanya damsel! who was 
in supreme command; and three Wo-Ngwanya headmen had 
thrown in their lot with her, taking oath to make her sover¬ 
eign of Wo-Ngwanya: so, they said, reported the droves of 
fugitives flocking to refuge in Eshowe. . . . 

Spiciewegiehotiu in a steady way for a long while kept on 
striking the tree-trunk within which she hid with the tip of 
one of the horns of her horned forehead, her eyeballs all disi- 
traught like the orb of the bison’s eye, like the bull’s, that, 
horning for fun and butting’s sake, broods with his orbs 
distraught; and afterwards she struck matches, match after 
match prodigally, watching them glow, or puffed by the gusts, 
nothing left in her but mechanism and mechanical action, 
but when only two matches were left she put back the box 
at her waist, and—leapt up to act. 

The question with her now was: Did Sebingwe know? 
Daisy might be acting either alone, or in league with Sebing¬ 
we: if alone, if Sebingwe did not know, she might patch up 
a peace with Sebingwe, be off to smash Daisy, then be back 
like tempest upon Sebingwe. 

At eight in the night an envoy of five left her for Sebingwe. 
She desired, she said, no more fighting, was tired of fighting, 
as Sebingwe could see for himself from the withdrawal that 
morning of her warriors in the thick of their victory: so for 
a nominal indemnity of five hundred, if Sebingwe desired, 
she was ready to be friends. 

At midnight came the embassy back. Sebingwe had singed 
off the head-ring of one of its members, and had sent the 


268 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

message: He was willing to treat; but let the Queen come 
to him herself; and she must make every step of the way on 
her knees. 

At which Spiciewegiehotiu flinched with a twist of the 
shoulders in protest, as from a blow; but some moments 
afterwards an arc-lamp, both hot and bright, arose in her 
eyes, a blighting pride; and “Ah!” she muttered, “it was 
Death made him say that, and he not know it: today he done 
seeing the sun go down.” 

Her will now was to crush Wo-Mashenya quickly with the 
first blinks of the sun, then swiftly to turn about and burst 
in wrath upon M’Niami, wresting success out of the very 
mouth of calamity by mere dazzlement of nimbleness and 
incredibility of briskness. That night she did not sleep; 
neither, though her fighters slept well, did the fighters of 
Sebingwe sleep, she launching upon them no less than five 
separate surprise-attacks by small bodies, to keep them 
touchy and jumpy, and cause them to be seedy in the morn¬ 
ing. 

And before morning broke she had before her under her 
hut forty line-regiment giants and forty rifle-men, whom she 
informed of the message which Sebingwe had sent her; and 
she said: “Me wonder which of you is to avenge me?— 
which one it is who is to kill Sebingwe? Me will love that 
fellow.” 

But no battle began at sunrise, as she had planned: for 
Sebingwe, knowing that Daisy was pelting to his aid, fled 
to await him, and it was afternoon before the Wa-Ngwanya, 
hotly following northward, forced him to a conflict. 

But by then he was behind a stockade previously built by 
him on the north brink of the Pirihompya, which, in that 
region, flows eastward: and in fording the stream, and in 
forcing the screen, hosts of the Queen’s heroes reeled, as in 
the season when trees waste their leaves, fleets of the slain 
sailing away to sea with the waves. Nothing, though, could 
check the Wa-Ngwanya; this fight was for wife and child; 


269 


CRASH 

they saw Spiciewegiehotiu horsed in the throng of it all, in 
peril, anon pointing a revolver to protect herself; and they 
fought as the tide rises, and as the reaper strides, the rifles 
reaping a rood of life, and the spears no pruning-hooks, but 
scythes. 

Hell howling deluged and rushed the stockade, and thence¬ 
forth it was a case of crush, hand-to-hand battle, eyeball-to- 
eyeball stabbing, and backward stepping for Sebingwe, who 
himself quickly ceased to witness it when a steadfast wedge of 
twenty, having forged a way toward him through floods of 
blood, and having bulleted him dead through the breast, got 
at him like dogs, and angrily gashed his body to strawberry- 
hash: off then gadded his head through the throng for a 
flag, aloft on an assegai. When his son, Nasandhlwana, took 
the cpmmand, the Wa-Mashenya were already in pretty steep 
retreat, and from his horseback Cobby, who had but now 
arrived, saw with his heart in his mouth through darkling 
twilight and driving squall the sight of the Queen, horse and 
all, being swept forward, as it seemed, by the momentum of 
the sweep of her teeming men. 

He was on the point of pelting that way, when he caught 
the noise of a spattering tramp of cavalry on sloppy soil, 
sounding louder and louder from the south, then a howling of 
a multitude of mouths, and now was aware of the legs of 
galloping nags making a palisade that came far-spread across 
the breadth of the plain, so that he and his guide had to 
gallop aside, flying from being rushed by this eruption of 
eyeballs, on all these horsemen’s heads being a helmet of hide 
having a horn of the ibex at the front, and the roughness 
of their bawling, and the assault of their irruption, helped 
these horns to make them horsemen of hell; and on a tall 
horse in a group galloping at the back of the troop was a 
woman, whom Cobby, though he could not see, assumed to 
be Sueela on her Mustapha. 

Ten minutes later they might have come too late: as it was, 
like the shock and rumpus of the archangel’s trump came 


270 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

that irruption upon their enemy. Notwithstanding that they 
were but a van, that they were under two thousand in num¬ 
ber, just the jump and wonderment of their coming won. 
Riot followed and now rout: for at once the ranks of Nasan- 
dhlwana rallied; and, distracted, the Wa-Ngwanya scat¬ 
tered and ran. 

The Queen being near a path, and divining with her eye 
in the half-dark that far and wide her army was squeezing 
itself into flight, as near her it was squeezing itself, tramp¬ 
ing itself, every man for himself, she fled, or rather let her¬ 
self be swept away by pressure along this path westward; 
and presently found herself bounding along a road with 
about forty of her own horses round her. 

Soon, however, these were pursued, as they could see in 
the sheen of a moon just come up, to illumine somewhat the 
drearness and gloom of an evening which the gale anon 
washed with torrents of rain; and when the pursuers proved 
to be M’Niami troops, the Wa-Ngwanya, who, though they 
hanker after M’Niami women, scorn M’Niami men, asked 
Spiciewegiehotiu if they should stop and fight to cover her 
flight; to which, glancing back at the troop of pursuers, she 
replied: “No, they can’t catch me on Selim: you all get 
killed, if you fight,” and the flight continued another minute, 
until some one of the M’Niami, firing a wanton rifle, shot a 
Mo-Ngwanya; upon which, with one thought, all the Wa- 
Ngwanya halted, threw their horses round, and flew to do and 
die fighting. 

But Spiciewegiehotiu, hardly bothering to glance behind 
at them, kept straight on at the same pace, she cared not 
whither, not wishing for bed nor bread, only for some cave 
or shed within which to bury away her head, and throw her 
shame; and, seeing her keep on, Cobby, following after her 
in the M’Niami troop, threw his animal aside into wild 
mimosa-land to avoid the oncoming Wa-Ngwanya, then, gal¬ 
oping full-bat, regained the road half a mile behind the Wa- 
Ngwanya, now fighting hand-to-hand with the M’Niami. 


271 


CRASH 

As she had not been conscious of his solitary pursuit 
through the bush, he rushed out upon the road hardly four 
hundred yards from her, on which, though he was under 
trees, she immediately knew him by his Ali’s hoofs, their 
ponderous roll prattling like drum-sticks upon the mud, 
knew him likewise by instinct of the eye, while he through 
drizzle could distinctly see her hair heavy with wet hanging 
half-lax on her back, could see her lean to her Selim’s ear 
to bid him flee, and now could see her mouth wide with laugh¬ 
ing when she twisted smartly to fire twice at him. 

“Shame!” he passionately shouted at her, his head now 
down to his animal’s mane. 

And a third time he saw her turn and fire her revolver 
with wrathful laughter, and now for some moments lost him¬ 
self, then refound himself down on the ground, dismounted 
over his horse’s head, which had foundered, shot in the shoul¬ 
der. 

As he started up, a small squad of M’Niami dashed past 
him after Spiciewegiehotiu, who had vanished; and when he 
made an attempt to follow them, his horse went tame and 
lame. So he turned back, observing now vultures gathering 
like guests to supper from every direction of heaven, and 
presently saw some hundred bodies blocking the road, with 
their guns, assegais, kerries, and three lynxes among them, 
with a company of vultures crammed with man, philanthro¬ 
pists at a symposium that only the moon looked at, musing 
over that lonesome moorland. All the Wa-Ngwanya had ap¬ 
parently fallen in the fracas, half as many more of the 
M’Niami, and, lying dead among the dead of man and nag, 
Cobby saw his guide. Nags were everywhere neighing, and 
presently, as he went, he began to see them running wild, 
singly and in groups, fleeing from the big battle; and soon 
began to meet man—on foot—single—in twos and threes— 
teeming in groups and troops, multitudinous, streaming, flee¬ 
ing from the stricken field, keen to be away anywhere, tear¬ 
ing along followed by their plumes and loose uniforms in 


272 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

the teeth of flaw and murky turmoil, bent beneath burdens of 
inclemency and immensity of adversity, but trotting steadily 
on and on, throwing anon an eye behind where hopelessness 
was, as before them homelessness; and with a sore in his 
bosom, with a hung head, Cobby moved slowly onward on a 
horse whose head was not less hung and heavy. . . . 

As to Spiciewegiehotiu, she sought shelter after midnight 
at the kraal of a headman named Moocrya, who pretended to 
be an independent chief, but paid tribute to Sebingwe. He 
gave her food, fodder, put her into a hut near him, and she, 
sleepless for two days, was soon swooning to sleep. 

With one ear open, however. Before long she was con¬ 
scious of noises, nocturnal voices—a party of M’Niami urg¬ 
ing upon the chief the need, for his skin’s good, to give her 
up: so, her Selim being near her, she went stealing out, called 
him soft, vaulted upon him, and was off. 

But she was hardly halfway down the kotla when, an 
alarm having been raised by a watch posted there, shots and 
horses were following her; on which she, not aware that they 
were under orders not to harm her, and were aiming at her 
horse’s quarters, caught at a limb of a tree in an impulse and 
clinging to life, though she longed to die; and the light was 
so dim, that they lost her, and, unconscious that she was in 
the tree, sprinted past her, continuing to follow the horse 
a little, until they could descry that it was riderless, and then 
stood at a loss. 

Selim, however, revealed her—to his own undoing: for he 
soon came trotting back with neighs to the tree: upon which 
she, seeing them pelting for her, dropped upon him, dread¬ 
ing death less than shame, and, facing them, was away again 
for the gate, firing the final shot of her revolver. 

Now, however, her Selim fell over her, pierced; and ere 
she could free herself from him, she was a prisoner. 


XXXVI 


QUEEN SUEELA 

T WO afternoons afterwards Cobby, wandering solitary 
for Eshowe through forested hill-country on his limp¬ 
ing mount, which limped constantly sicker, encoun¬ 
tered a mob of Wa-Mashenya Tommies sho'uting song on 
their way northward from Eshowe, who informed him that 
they had met travelling from the west a party of M’Niami 
who had Spiciewegiehotiu a captive with them, and were 
conveying her to Eshowe, which was in flames. 

Cobby’s eye lightened, and he flogged his horse to be on; 
but Ali could only go slow. Even here nags were to be seen 
which appeared to be runaways from the Battle of the Piri- 
hompya, but they all avoided capture, nor in all this part 
of Wo-Ngwanya, where all the hamlets had been abandoned, 
could he get a nag; so that he felt “my ‘kingdom’ for a 
horse,” and thought of rushing on foot to Eshowe—which, 
in truth, if he had known more, he would have done. 

Eshowe, as the Wa-Mashenya had reported, was then in 
flames, and even from the remote end of “The Elephant” at 
eight that evening the ex-Queen was able to observe in the 
clouds the brown and frown of its burning. And it was 
through fires that she drew nigh to it—camp-fires of hosts of 
Wa-Mashenya, of hosts of M’Niami, regiment after regiment, 
of each of which, when she moved near it, she knew the name 
by the make and scheme of its shield—all this panorama of 
camp-fires, wafted by winds under the wings of a falcon 
of sparks and smoke bound darkling south from the roaring 
town, being imbrued with the luridness and wrath of a drama 

273 


274 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

from Tartarus. As for the people of Eshowe, these, as usual 
in such cases there, had all flung their all upon the altar of 
God, and gone headlong in flight to hide or die. 

When Spiciewegiehotiu was conducted up the hot kotla, 
which was encumbered with soldiers, there on the platform 
at the top was seated Sueela in the stone throne, surrounded 
by about a hundred M’Niami; Mandaganya, her mother, 
not there; none of her own people; but among the M’Niami 
priests and heralds, who, some minutes previously, had been 
proclaiming her Queen of Eastern Wo-Ngwanya, she being 
barbarously garbed with a broad gaudiness, bedizened with 
ornaments of gold and stones, a Queen, enthroned, reclined, 
serene, smiling an evil smile, attired in a kaross long to the 
ankles, yellow with black elephants, a dress of Spiciewegie- 
hotiu’s, and from her helmeted head vaulted enormous horns, 
upon whose reds and browns of ochre shone a crowd of 
torches brawling about her. 

At sight of Spiciewegiehotiu she half started up, but then 
smartly sat again; and, beckoning to one of the captor-group 
to gallop to her, got from him the details of the capture be¬ 
fore Spiciewegiehotiu, having been unbound, was hoisted off 
a horse, and stood before the platform. The two then looked 
at each other; and said Sueela, smiling: “Well, Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu? You see.” 

Sueela had drunk blood, was fresh from orgy, and some¬ 
thing or other in her air was very strange, debauched, and 
raw, across her forehead being scrawled, as it were, “Baby¬ 
lon, mother of harlots.” Just the fact that she had stabbed in 
the back her country, so beloved, that she was everywhere 
execrated, her soul in hell, had been the cause that she had 
broken loose, gone the whole hog, so that more had fled and 
bled and blazed before the march of her devastation than if 
any male had led the army of M’Niami, for at the drunken¬ 
ness of the rumbling of the drums up in her blood had 
flashed the savage, flashing the eye of riot and rapine, and, 


275 


QUEEN SUEELA 

mixed with the blood of massacre, had been quaffed other 
liquor, and liquor of lips, she, stark and staring, dancing 
distracted cancans in revels of shamelessness, shaking frenzy 
from her hair, demanding the man-in-the-moon and more- 
than-man to manage her. The burning of Eshowe might well 
have been averted by a word of hers; but she had done noth¬ 
ing: only the ground round about the sigodhlo—that spot, 
that cloister—holy of holies to her bosom—home of her 
youth—she had rescued and protected, as she could, the 
storm being from the north. 

And revealing her teeth, sneering, she said with levity to 
Spiciewegiehotiu: “You marry me to Daisy, no? You see 
now. You not always clever! You not see everything! 
Other girls clever, too!” 

A statue stood there, the defeated Queen, hard, calm, 
marble, rain-streams rambling down the rampart of her face, 
her hair relaxed, and to nothing she gave answer, her gaze 
meditating steadily upon the other. 

And Sueela, sneering, with levity: “Now you go to your 
own country, no? Me give you Sir Cobby. He mad after 
me, me can have him, but me not want him: me married; 
me good.” 

No answer: Spiciewegiehotiu’s eyes now clandestinely esti¬ 
mating her chances of attack and escape. 

And Sueela: “Where Sir Cobby is? You see him any¬ 
where when he follow you from the battle?” 

No answer: only Spiciewegiehotiu’s lips curved a little, 
shivered a little as it curved, she thinking of Cobby dead 
by her hand, having dimly witnessed his fall from his horse. 

And Sueela, with sneering teeth: “You think me care 
whether you answer me or no? You nobody now, my girl. 
You soon go off to your own country, nobody care, me not 
care. You marry me to Daisy: now me Queen of half Wo- 
Ngwanya, of all M’Niami; me have other things to think 
about than Spiciewegiehotiu.” 


276 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

At this point Spiciewegiehotiu, having watched for a chance, 
snatched the spear of the officer nearest her, and, leaping, was 
on the platform in rapid career to stab Sueela. 

But a shout broke out, and she just failed by a foot, four 
soldiers throwing themselves over her, shaking her, pouring 
over her a coal-sack of French and tongue; and, panting and 
captive, she stood among them, till Sueela, leaping up drew 
a knife from her waist, and stood with her, saying to the 
men: “Go away—leave her,” and to Spiciewegiehotiu, sneer¬ 
ing, revealing her teeth: “You want to kill me, no? But 
the spear too heavy: that why you fail; take this knife.” 

She held it out. 

“Me do it,” Spiciewegiehotiu mentioned, not taking it. 

“Well, do it: here’s a knife for you, my girl.” 

Spiciewegiehotiu took the knife. 

“Now,” Sueela said, baring her breasts; and tense stood 
the spectators of it with staring eyes, while Spiciewegiehotiu 
eyed her up and down, down and up, with a malign eye. 

“Nobody to touch her when she do it!” Sueela flung aside 
from her; adding: “Now, my girl!” 

Spiciewegiehotiu’s lip was curved at dirt; but the stroke 
did not come. 

“What, you not do it?” said Sueela with levity, with sneer¬ 
ing teeth: “You ’fraid, no? What you have to be ’fraid 
of? ’Fraid to strike your—friend?”—her voice on a sudden 
broke. 

“Slut,” said Spiciewegiehotiu. 

“Yes, me bad, Spiciewegiehotiu—eheh, me baud —but me 
not so bad as God and the devils think me.” 

Now her face went aside to hide what welled in her eyes; 
at the same time Spiciewegiehotiu’s face convulsed one mo¬ 
ment, and now, dropping the knife, off she rushed to drop 
from the platform at a point rather empty of men, and, 
dodging capture, was gone, all legs, devouring the ground, 
down the kotla’s length. 

“What she going to do?” started out of Sueela’s mouth: 


277 


QUEEN SUEELA 

“catch her!” upon which immediately a mob of people at 
full speed were in pursuit, and in a few moments more in 
pursuit, too, was Sueela, who, in leaping, threw off her 
kaross, and, using that extreme freedom and fleetness of her 
feet, was soon leading the stream of pursuers, and stealing 
surely upon the fugitive. 

But she was chasing a fox: though the kotla was populous 
with soldiers, and Sueela thrice cried out “Stop her!” to 
people ahead, Spiciewegiehotiu, herself fleet of foot, dodged 
them in detail, as she could, the moon’s light being very ob¬ 
scured by the tempest and tenebrous mood of the night, and 
by that roof of smoke that rolled over all, so that all oc¬ 
curred as in some vault of murk and Orcus; moreover, when 
the ex-Queen, who, running south, had steered her feet east, 
too, rushed upon a bridge of “The Gut,” a big baobab close 
to the bridge hid her for some moments, and when the fore¬ 
most pursuer followed upon the bridge, she was no longer 
on it: they saw only her horned helmet and kaross going 
down “The Gut” in the shine of huts on fire beyond: at 
sight of which Sueela cried out: “She going down ‘The Gut’!” 
and, seeking her, peering, the pack ran down the stream, which, 
in its passage through the town, is narrow and rapid. 

But, in fact, Spiciewegiehotiu was going up “The Gut” 
after lingering a little in the dark under the bridge, and 
after swimming with difficulty a little up and across, to emerge 
in singed mimosa on the deserted east shore, up which in a 
purgatory of heat and reek she sprinted, until she got to 
the spot where the river runs under the stockade; and it was 
still with a sort of official shock that she saw no watchman 
there; whence she made her way up into the wilds on the brink 
of White River. 


XXXVII 


BELLADONNA 

U P there she remained a long time, anon catching sight 
of parties rambling far and wide with lights to find 
her. It was after midnight when she went back to 
Eshowe, bent with fatigue, weary of being, in her fingers a 
sprig of a tree rare there, the deadly-nightshade which she had 
fled to find. 

Slowly over the kotla her footsteps moved, unnoticed, 
M’Niami troops being addicted to liquor, and most of the 
slumberers drunk. After passing through the sigodhlo gate, 
where no guard was, she saw at the gate of the royal grounds 
two guards, prostrate dogs, with a gourd of strychnia liquor 
close, and her lip a little scorned the mood of the new gov¬ 
erning. She passed up the avenue, her object now being 
to burn Cobby’s waggons before going along that path which 
she purposed: for, Cobby dead, as she thought, and she in¬ 
tending to follow that way, she did not want his belongings 
to be left in hands alien and profane; and as, besides, she 
thought that the Wa-Ngwanya in the North might some time 
rise and fight, she did not desire that Sueela, who had seen 
the machine-gun fired, should have it to aim against} them. 

Soft and slow she paced, could see that the hut was occu¬ 
pied—a slight escape of light at the door—but ventured to 
stop, and drop, and prop her heavy head upon that door, 
which she had known as home since the age of seven; where, 
seated with shut eyes, drearily she smiled at dribble beating 
her, at the bravura of that froufrou of breezes trooping with 
whoops through the multitudinous wood, as a woman whoops 
out with frolic when a flaw swoops-up her frocks: smiling 


279 


BELLADONNA 

steadily, as one may grin and grin and be a death’s-head, no 
sob, nor salt in her tears of dribble; prepared to pay and 
bear, not having “seen everything,” having committed what, 
to her, was the one Sin—faulty polity, wrong conduct, trust 
in others just because she loved them, and thought that they 
loved her, uncircumspect seeing, purblind business, infirm 
building; and then the destined tendency in events, star of 
disaster: hating herself and That Which makes, she disdained 
to make complaint. 

She heard a word or two murmured within the hut, then 
stillness, then a word or two, and stillness; then, presently, 
the breath of a sniff close inside, then a “ivhoof!” sounded, 
and understood that it sounded from Mandaganya’s little dog, 
Ronja: upon which she sprang upright, and was gone for 
the grove where the waggons were. 

The night, though so wild, being still white, one could see: 
and after collecting into little heaps what was left of the 
leaves that had been heaped by her men under the waggons, 
she went to a shed into which the fuel-wood had been flung 
when she had run to tell the men to remove the fuel-heaps 
from under the waggons, so that Cobby might not see them; 
and from the shed she fetched armful after armful of wood 
to deposit in good order as fuel-heaps under the waggons. 

After which, taking a match-box out of a little charm-box 
at her moocha-waist, she looked into it—two matches only. 

And, cautious as she was, the wind whiffed out one: upon 
which she spread a bit of tarpaulin from a waggon upon a 
waggon-wheel that faced the gale, and, kneeling near behind, 
got a few leaves alight, flew to the fuel-heap near, and, using 
that magic of savages in lighting fires, soon had the fuel- 
heap sounding, fuming, sloping south, an opal flowing. 

Bent under the waggon, she stood waiting for the blaze to 
get well going, before taking brand from it to make the other 
blazes, her eyes now lowered to rest on her sprig of bella¬ 
donna, while a vitagraph of the story of her life unrolled 
itself before her memory—scenes from the Second and Third 


280 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

M’Niami Wars, her coup d'etat and leap to the throne, the 
execution of the princes, the coming of Rolls, then of Mac- 
ray, of Cobby . . . she shrugged, and moved to get the 
brand. 

But for some time before this, ever since his “whoof!” at 
the hut-door, the little dog of Mandaganya had been very 
restless, as dogs will be a little before being poisoned or 
blown to the clouds; and “What the matter with him?” 
Mandaganya had demanded of Sueela, with whom she was 
keeping vigil, all at a loss and in dismay and mourning over 
that homeless head of Spiciewegiehotiu; and at last when the 
little Ronja had persisted in scratching at the door, when 
she had let him out, and he had rushed off, then had come 
back to invite her with insistence to go with him, she, ever in¬ 
clined to scent “second-sight” in him, went with him. 

Now he gamboled gladly, and, nose to ground, soon had 
her dragged to the waggons, whereupon she, catching sight 
of fire, and nothing to explain it, for Spiciewegiehotiu had 
fled a little way, instinctively snatched up a branch, and 
dashed at the brands, to lash and shatter. 

Upon which Spiciewegiehotiu, standing now outside that 
waggon, smiled and shrugged, muttering: “Even in this me 
fail.” 

At the same time Mandaganya turned to the little dog to 

demand of it: “How you know that there was a-?” but 

now heard a twig snap under a step, glanced that way, and 
became conscious of Spiciewegiehotiu beyond the waggon. 

A cry broke from her: “My darling !”—and she ran. 

But Spiciewegiehotiu ran from her round the waggon, she 
after, crying out through the barking of the dog: “You run 
from me?” 

“Good-bye, Mandaganya!” called Spiciewegiehotiu, laugh¬ 
ing, popping some of the belladonna berries into her mouth. 

“Oh, God!” Mandaganya gasped, all aghast, pursuing her 
round the waggon, having soon noted in the moonlight the 



BELLADONNA 281 

sprig in her fingers, and known of what tree of groaning that 
fruit grew. 

And back she doubled short upon the fugitive; but Spicie- 
wegiehotiu doubled, too, stopping an instant to peep mis¬ 
chievously round a corner of the waggon, laughing, exhibit¬ 
ing how she crammed more of the berries into her mouth, 
then afresh was away. 

And, “Oh, you wicked thing!” panted Mandaganya, trot¬ 
ting in heavy haste, all pants and gasps, and breasts in dis¬ 
tress for breath; and when again at the next corner Spicie- 
wegiehotiu stopped to peep, and laugh, and exhibit, “Oh, you 
spiteful thing!” Mandaganya gasped: “you do not love Manda¬ 
ganya? Oh, you ungrateful thing!” and so round, with 
doublings-back and dodgings, they rushed, and narrow es¬ 
capes of Spiciewegiehotiu, and laughs, and pantings of the 
heart, till Spiciewegiehotiu stopped to lay her head on a 
corner, and was caught. 

No syllable now uttered the sybil, but, getting firm hold, 
picked up and bore the girl on her powerful bosom, a moan 
sounding out of her mouth. 

So Spiciewegiehotiu presently lay on her own old bed of 
skins betwixt the two roof-trees of red mopane-wood, she 
rapidly flushing, to pink, to red, to crimson, while a wild 
silence reigned, the sybil with fixed lips administering some 
one of the herbal simples borne at her girdle in little gourds, 
though, in truth, the globe held no hellebore that could now 
heal the hell of that heat and fever, or ward off the mortal 
hour—except morphia, the antidote of atropa, a fact of which, 
probably, the doctoress lacked all knowledge; and anon that 
laughter of atropa, half-hearted, starting up exclamatory, lan¬ 
guidly dropping off, as in the languid mockery of the cosmos, 
started up from the unconscious form, and dropped off, 
while Sueela, revealing her teeth in a rictus of the lips, sat 
a picture of horror, her back propped upon a pillar, her fin¬ 
gers outstuck stiff, a downlooking craze in her gaze that 


282 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

gloated as on gulfs of destruction and groaning. Only one 
outcry to Heaven she made: “Oh, where Sir Cobby is? If 
he was here, he never let her die like this!”—she having no 
knowledge of Cobby’s halt horse, shot by Spiciewegiehotiu. 

Only Mandaganya, after an hour, spoke: spoke on and on 
in a low tone, crooning over the crimson delirium and de¬ 
rision of the fever’s dreaming. “My lamb. No father, no 
mother, only me; lost in Africa; and she put up such a 
fight against it, and beat it; and now it beat her; this is what 
she was to come to; there she lie; my white lamb. Me bring 
forth fourteen sons, and me love them all, but only now me 
know, my God, how cruel a mother’s bowels can rue—my 
mangled lamb—poor mute ewe—if Mandaganya’sj bosom 
could ooze blood that’d do you good, she’d drench you redder 
yet than you be, stretched there. . . . She laugh. . . . She 
laugh to pass out of the dirty world. ... You wanted to be 
a Queen, no?”—to Sueela, with a nod—“Queen of Wo- 
Ngwanya, no? And this is what you bring her to. What 
sort of a Queen? You think you can put on her shoes, and 
rule men as she rule them? A little bastard like you? She 
pick you up out of the ditch, a little bastard, she clasp you 
to her breast, she tell you Me-and-you, and this is what you 
bring her to. Oh, high Heaven, that bella in her belly bite 
her bitter, but it bite her never a bit so bitter as the unre¬ 
membrance of that bitter breast must have bit her. If you 
wanted-” 

“Oh, Ma-Sueela”—from Sueela, irritated to speech at 
last—“me not answer you! If you know that me love 
Spiciewegiehotiu more than my own self, you mad! you mad! 
you mad!” 

Up started the dreamer’s laughter, half-hearted, exclama¬ 
tory, and fainted away. 

And quietly the sybil: “Don’t you answer me back; don’t 
you say ‘mad’ to me. Say it again, just to see what happen 
to you. Me owe you a drubbing as it is, my lady. You 
think me not hear about your carryings-on since the war 



BELLADONNA 


283 


started? You think so? If me was that fool of a Daisy 
me’d cut off your right leg, and then cut off your left arm, 
to balance you. You think-” 

But now on a sudden two wild eyeballs intruded into the 
doorway, and the light flickered upon the ax of Sandeli- 
katze, Sueela’s whole-brother, the executioner, who, though 
like his other brothers he had shaken the dust of Eshowe 
off his shoes, and was a fugitive, had stolen back to use his 
ax: and where she?" started from his lips, as in darted his 
limber limbs. 

Doubtless, if she had fled, that would have been her death- 
hour, but, as she never stirred, her unconcern may have some¬ 
what perturbed his nervous pose, and the next moment he got 
a cuff on the jaw which sent him staggering, from Manda- 
ganya, who said to him, “You mad, no?” and cast the ax 
out of door. 

On which he stepped with stiff fingers to strangle his sis¬ 
ter, but in the midst of a cataract of invective saw Spicie- 
wegiehotiu, and now profoundness of ruth modified the mood 
of his rage, he rushing to kneel and moan and hold her hand 
to his cheek; and after half an hour he was induced to take 
himself away, his mother having made a rendezvous with 
him in a wood. 

Then fifteen minutes more of that vigil over the dying, 
and then the eyes of Cobby, just arrived at Eshowe, were pry¬ 
ing in, he at once conscious of atropa, the scarlet, the laugh¬ 
ter. . . . And sore now his heart smote him and smarted, a 
lamentable outcry clamouring out of his bosom: “Now, Al¬ 
mighty God, help me, have pity . . .” and in some moments 
he had her, trotting ponderously with her down the avenue 
for his hut, followed by Mandaganya and Sueela fluttering, 
and before long had her blood saturated with sulphate of 
morphia. 


XXXVIII 


REINSTATEMENT 

T HE vitality of Spiciewegiehotiu rallied the following 
afternoon; and the next forenoon her eyes opened with 
sight, and saw Cobby alive at her side. 

Then, laid in Cobby’s deck-chair, she spent days of silence, 
smiling, pallid now, though the backs of her hands remained 
of that hue named by Herbert Spencer “impure purple.” 

She saw Sueela come and go, saw her seated on the floor 
with her head leant upon Cobby, her eyes closed, “clothed 
and in her right mind” at Cobby’s side; saw Mandaganya 
come and go; let Cobby hold her hand; but made no remark; 
hardly replied to anything: none knew her mind. 

But during the fifth forenoon, lying outside the hut-door, 
she suddenly wished to know of Cobby: “Why you bring 
me back from the dead?” 

“Aren’t you glad like us others?” he asked. 

She shrugged; glanced up at the glorious day; said: “The 
sun good. But you think me going to live? Me down; me 
dead; me done. My friends fail me; they plot together 
against me; and me not suspect it—God take away my under¬ 
standing.” 

Cobby gently answered: “What you say is very wrong: 
Sueela loves you with the whole of her pure soul, and the 
stupendous thing which she has done she has done for you, 
in consequence of my having persuaded her that that would 
be for your good, if you came with me to England. As to 
my failing you, I shall explain to you the fix I was in, and 
you will see why I could not go into battle against Sueela’s 
men: then you will repent bitterly of having shot bullets at 

284 


REINSTATEMENT 285 

my life, which is your life, and of attempting to take your 
life which is my life.” 

She shrugged. “Me down; me done. Me done loving; 
me done hating.” 

“You don’t love me?" 

“No.” 

“Oh, but that’s nonsense; you do.” 

She was silent; but presently said: “Maybe me live. The 
sun good. They have much wind in that country you come 
from? Maybe me go with you to that country. They say 
you save my life: now me your cow. Throw me into any 
old hut in that country.” 

“No!”—he kissed her kaross—“I have decided: you shall 
not come perforce. I go alone—in a few days—dreadfully 
desolate, irretrievably bereaved—but I go, after having re¬ 
stored you to the throne from which I have helped to dethrone 
you.” 

Now her eyes moved round to him. “Restore?” 

“Yes.” 

“How you-?” But now her interest in his statement 

failed, she letting her head drop despondently and, moving 
it slowly, muttered: “Me down. Maybe they rise in The 
North; but they never swear by Spiciewegiehotiu any more. 
Me down, me done.” 

He put his lips on her hand, saying: “On the contrary, 
you are up—higher than you ever were. I only pray of you 
that in future, for my sake, in remembrance of me, you will 
not be always making war upon your neighbours.” 

“Me?” she muttered, drooping, in that rueing tone of 
melancholia: “what me have to do with wars? Me done. 
War good; but it bad, it bad, for them that make it: it’s the 
sons that eat the wheat which the mothers thresh from the 
breasts they beat.” 

“Well, if that be really so,” he answered, “war is worth 
the making, for man himself is of no importance, only the 
son of man. But since you do see that war is bad for some 


286 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

—for those very some whom it is the ruler’s business to 
protect—you will not now be too aggressive, and, as for 
the aggressions of others, I assure you that for the future 
no negro will ever dream of daring to molest or offend you.” 

With fresh interest she sat up at this, saying: “You talk. 
. . . What you can do?” 

“I have told Sueela of my decision,” he answered: “she 
will at once withdraw the M’Niami army, and Daisy will pay 
you a war-indemnity of a thousand. As to Nasandhlwana, I 
am now about to order him to withdraw, and to pay a war- 
indemnity of four thousand-” 

At this she laughed out a little, saying: “Nasandhlwana 
laugh!” 

“On the contrary,” Cobby replied: “he will cry, his head 
will be waters, and his eyes a fountain of tears—tear-gas will 
make him sentimental. . . . Here comes Sueela: say some¬ 
thing to her, for me, will you? Love her again, as she loves 
you and me.” 

But to Sueela she had ceased to say anything, and when 
the next forenoon, w T hich was bright and breezy, a spirit of 
life pricked her, and the whim sprang in her to go up White 
River as in glad old times for a bath with five of the sigodhlo 
Phcebes, Sueela was not invited. 

Cobby saw her off from the sigodhlo back—not that he ex¬ 
pected any peril for her, though crowds of rowdy troops 
were everywhere about; and after watching the bevy vanish 
into the river-bush, went back to his hut, whence he at once 
sent word in Sueela’s name to three colonels of Wo-Mashenya 
regiments near, requesting them to come to him. 

When they had come, he, in the presence of Sueela seated 
near, listening, chin on fists, made them into an embassy to 
Nasandhlwana to bear this message: 

“Sir Cobby declares to Nasandhlwana that he is a god. 

“He can easily destroy Nasandhlwana, his people, his capi¬ 
tal, his cattle. 

“But since Sir Cobby looks like just such a man as 



REINSTATEMENT 287 

Nasandhlwana is, he does not expect Nasandhlwana to credit 
him with being a god before he proves it. 

“So, three moons hence, Sir Cobby will appear in the 
form of a dove, crooning cooings of thunder, above Kranam- 
pya, Nasandhlwana’s capital kraal. 

“But Sir Cobby is a god who abhors to destroy, unless he 
is disobeyed. So he is not going to destroy Kranampya, only 
to destroy so much of it as to show that he could destroy the 
whole, if he chose. 

“Therefore, at that hour the population of Kranampya 
must evacuate the town, assembling somewhere well outside 
it. Whoever stays within will die, as all the horses, and 
kine, and dogs, in it will die. Nor must any one enter it for 
some hours after Sir Cobby has come and gone, or he may 
die. And, as for those assembled outside the town, they will 
all begin to weep bitter tears, as if all their mothers had 
died, and some few will be slightly wounded. 

“At once after which Nasandhlwana will make haste to 
withdraw all his men from Wo-Ngwanya territory, and to 
send four thousand chosen cattle to Queen Spiciewegiehotiu 
as war-indemnity, and as recompense for the wanton wrong 
done by Sebingwe, his father, in permitting men of the Wo- 
Mashenya army to wage war upon Queen Spiciewegiehotiu in 
her previous war with Daisy.” 

The three colonels, having heard it with their ears, sat 
there astare, three different pictures of scare. Blessed is 
he who hath not seen, and yet hath believed! and blessed 
were they. 

“Now, pray,” Cobby said to the one in the centre, “repeat 
to me the message.” 

And that one began: “Sir Cobby say to Nasandhlwana—. 
He God! He come from Heaven! Angels his servants! 
He can-” 

But he was interrupted. Five wild-eyed girls, gasping, 
burst in, competing in screaming: “ Sueela! Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu—they steal her!” 


288 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

All sprang upright, Cobby quite white, none black, to 
gather presently from the girl’s gasps that a gang of some 
thirty, just as the girls had dressed after bathing, had burst 
from the bush, snatched up Spiciewegiehotiu, and dashed off 
with her on mules—north-westward. . . . 

Cobby’s heart was rent: she still not well. . . . 

Who were those men? Were they M’Niami? Were they 
Wa-Mashenya? The girls could not say. 

“They not M’Niami!” cried out Sueela. 

“They not Wa-Mashenya!” cried one of the Wa-Mashenya: 
“They go on mules! They Swingoni!” these Swingoni being 
tribesmen rather wild and degraded, semi-independent, but 
paying some tribute to Wo-Mashenya. 

But Cobb)f at once suspected Nasandhlwana, at any rate 
of connivance, reminded by the event that Sebingwe had 
once proposed marriage with Nasandhlwana to Spiciewegie¬ 
hotiu, that Nasandhlwana had desired white, and a white fist 
Cobby banged at the three Wa-Mashenya, telling them of woe 
to Wo-Mashenya, if she was not delivered up within five days. 
“Go! tell Nasandhlwana this with the rest.” 

“Wait, me give you my Mustapha!” Sueela cried, running 
out with them; and one on Mustapha flew forerunning the 
others. 

Then followed two days of care for Cobby, he now alone, 
for, since the aeroplane had to be inspected and prepared, 
he had been unable to go with Sueela, who had dashed off 
with cavalry to track the ravishers. 

On the second gloaming the aeroplane stood ready at the 
top of the kotla with a guard of M’Niami round it, and half 
the night, and all the following morning mobs were filing 
near to peer at it, all the awna being populous to its bot¬ 
tom: for to farthest M’Niami and Wo-Mashenya the fame of 
that strange carriage of Cobby’s with only two wheels in 
tandem, and the mad steeds inside, had flown, and, it was 
now assumed that this must be that motor-bicycle, or some 
other kind of a like thing. But when, an hour before noon, 


REINSTATEMENT 289 

Cobby walked out to it, bounded upon it, the rough row and 
power of it now fretting every ear, the propeller spinning a 
mere nebula and remnant of visibility, then were wild eyes 
intent, the mouth hardly now robbing from the eye the time 
to toss a remark aside, or to moisten the lips with spittle; 
and now he was dashing! over ashes and cinders down the 
length of the square, as many thousands now fleeing with 
screams from before his career as were darting with howling 
after him, every one looking to see him go scooting out where 
the great gates had lately stood; but when, somewhat before 
he got half to the market, all at once God took him, and flut¬ 
tering triumphant he reigned on his throne in the air, then 
there arose and floated to him a drone of many adoring, and 
many were felled. 

It was the same at Kranampya, a kraal in a charming vale, 
all orchard, maize and palmyra, and white blossoms of bao¬ 
bab, whither he had twice before ridden; and, knowing pre¬ 
cisely its compass-point, he arrived before noon, spied its 
folk crowded two miles outside it, and, flying low thrice over 
it, dropped one high-explosive bomb, four “mustard” gas- 
shells (di-chlorethyl sulphide), and four chlorines; then into 
the nest of kneeling people laid a few “egg-bombs” of tear- 
gas to make them mourn a little because of him; and in a 
little while was taken out of their sight. 

But he came down badly, not in Eshowe, but in a meadow, 
smashing his chassis; and there in that meadow the mono¬ 
plane remained, as its wreck may there remain for many a 
day, a monument of man’s mentality immensely more monu¬ 
mental than those remains of ancient “civilization” which at 
various places confront one in that country. 


XXXIX 


THE SWINGONI 

W HEN Cobby walked back into Eshowe he found 
Sueela now there—speechless for grief, she not hav¬ 
ing succeeded in tracking the gang of ravishers, 
though she had now discovered that they were, in fact, a 
gang of the ungoverned Swingoni. 

This was soon confirmed by urgent messengers from 
Nasandhlwana asserting that the guilty ones were Swingoni, 
who had thus turned to their purpose the turmoil and dis¬ 
turbed condition of things, their motive being to beguile 
Nasandhlwana into purchasing the white girl, for they had 
sent him an offer to sell her at a certain spot, and Nasandhl¬ 
wana was then starting off with half an impi, first to win 
Spiciewegiehotiu of them by purchase, and then to extermi¬ 
nate them. As to the other demands of Cobby, these were 
being met. 

Such was the message: but for Cobby and Sueela to sit 
still and wait upon Nasandhlwana’s activity was impossible; 
therefore, having ascertained the proposed route of Nasandhl¬ 
wana’s party, they started off to come up with it on the motor¬ 
bicycle. 

They came up with it the same night; and two nights later 
arrived at the rendezvous given by the Swingoni—a mountain- 
road, where, in a grove, four gods of wood stood under four 
marulas. 

When Nasandhlwana had had drums beaten, a drum within 
the grove answered, and soon two Swingoni appeared, who 
arranged the details of a meeting to take place the next day 

290 


THE SWINGONI 291 

between their chief and the King on the brink of a lake be¬ 
neath. 

This lake could be vaguely seen gleaming remotely below 
in moonlight, a river-like pool, leagues long, though hardly 
four hundred yards across; and it was almost known that in 
the village beyond this Spiciewegiehotiu must be. 

So, to be nearer to her, Cobby and Sueela, after the bivouac 
and a meal, rode down on the motor, some four or five miles, 
sometimes with tense brakes, to the lake’s brink, it being 
then late toward the midnight of a mild night, benign, sancti¬ 
fied, sighing as in satisfaction and fulfilment, its little breaths 
brindling that brand of brilliance which bridged the lake’s 
breadth, treading-water within that brand, like rabbles of 
bathers bathed in beatitude; and for over an hour they two 
stood there holding the motor, alone, as it were, in the world, 
though a roof or two looked out through wood across the 
water; both hushed and mournful; and with a low brow she 
muttered: “You go—and without her. So all me do me 
do for nothing. And now she not love me any more.” 

“Yes, she loves you,” he answered, “and will soon forgive 
fully. She is not quite well yet.” 

“She in Wo-Ngwanya, me in M’Niami, you gone where the 
sun set, everything ended. Oh, my, me not want to live; me 
die: my mother say me born to die young.” 

“No, no”—he patted her—“you are still a child: life will 
unfold for you new interests. She will borrow you often 
from Daisy, and some day I may be driven to come again to 
see her and you.” 

“It too far,” she mourned; “she and me wait, and you not 
come. If you come, you find me bad. Me bad now. You 
not—know—what me done since the war. When me close to 
you me good, but a devil in me.” 

“Nothing of the sort,” he confidently answered: “you are 
very good, and dear, and pure an fond. What you imagine 
to be a devil is God, who is all in all, and nothing is but 
Him. Look, the moon, that’s He in beauty; and the man-in- 


292 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

the-moon, that’s He in buffoonery. And He some day will 
be perfectly good, I think; and meantime, when He is good, 
and when He is bad, is perfectly working. . . . What have 
you done since the war?” 

Her head bent. “Me go crazy, me untrue to you, me dance 
at you, me spit at you. . . .” 

“Oh, fie: and at poor Daisy?” 

“Oh, he —Eheh.” 

“Well, then, I am cross. All that is so undistinguished. 

. . . But never mind, forgive Him in you and yourself in Him 
till seventy times, and ever afresh be trying to be pretty and 
princely. And when you achieve, that’s He succeeding in 
achieving, and when you fail, that’s He succeeding in failing.” 

“Me remember. . . . Me love you too much! It not love; 
me adore the dust you’ve stood on. And you go . . . you 
go. . . . Tonight me tell you good-bye. You owe me one 
last kiss.” 

“Yes, the third. But why tonight?” 

“Me not know. Something make me want it now.” 

Now he put an arm round her, saying: “Very good, come 
—my dear.” 

On which, taking his face between her hands, she kissed 
him long, continently, solemnly, kissing his soul, conscious 
of the moments, and of long time to come in which those 
moments would not be; then cried out “Oh!” and succumbed 
to her knees, still holding him. 

When he had raised her, they stood side by side in silence, 
looking over the trail of light on the lake, and that pretty 
tripping of the ripples within it, like treaders steadily tread¬ 
ing water, while the warbling, and warning, of a wedrigo 
(accent on “go”; sort of owl) sounded out of wood near on 
their left, until Sueela breathed: “My goodness, that wed¬ 
rigo . . . sure token of death. . . .” and then again breathed: 
“What that is coming there?” 

Cobby also saw a black object blotching the blaze of the 
trail on the lake, without comprehension; but in some mo- 


293 


THE SWINGONI 

ments more Sueela, who was of an extreme keenness of sight, 
cried out, even as she rushed from him to plunge into the 
water: “It is Spiciewegiehotiu! She escape!” 

This was so: and before the two heads on the lake met 
Cobby heard shoutings on the further shore, then saw some 
thirty canoes, full of pursuers, spurt off. . . . 

Highly excited, drawing his revolver, he fired at those in 
the line of light. 

This, however, although he emptied his magazine, did not 
stay any of them, and madly on they came paddling, gain¬ 
ing fast, and presently raining at Cobby arrows which these 
Swingoni poison with the entrails of the catapillar n’gwa: so 
he was soon hiding behind the bicycle, until he hurried with 
it to the girls, who emerged on the shingle some hundred 
yards in advance of the Swingoni. 

“Fly—they kill-!” Spiciewegiehotiu panted at him, 

she herself starting off immediately for the timber near. 

“No, come! come! the motor!” he called, running some 
steps after her. 

But that might have been well, if he had not interfered; 
for it appears that she, not aware that help was near her, had 
carefully concocted her escape, had been conscious that she 
would be chased, but still had been confident of making safe 
away within the timber. 

He, however, knowing nothing of her plans, could hardly 
have helped interfering: and she, seeing him and Sueela in a 
peril which each instant grew while she and he stood arguing, 
darted to the motor, which immediately started, she between 
Cobby’s arms, Sueela on the carrier. 

One minute more and the savages were splashing up to the 
shore, well left behind, but not afrighted from flying after 
that marvellous cart that carried off their prize, nor frightened 
to shoot, since Spiciewegiehotiu, whom they did not want to 
shoot, was quite covered by the other two. 

And presently, with loud mouths of discovery, they found 
themselves coming closer to the motor, which, thus loaded, 



294 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

was now only slowly moving up a steep foothill of the moun¬ 
tain; and soon nearly ceased to move. 

Whereupon the air became thick with missiles, Cobby coax¬ 
ing the motor all he could in vain: and the fact that at that 
hill-top, not far, was deliverance, and the fact that the whole 
misery was unnecessary, since the men were willing to sell 
their captive, added to the affliction and prickly-heat of his fix. 
He even contemplated surrender, but dreaded being killed 
before the meaning of the surrender could be understood; and 
now Spiciewegiehotiu called out: “You get shot! me run”— 
making a movement to dismount; but Cobby’s elbows instinc¬ 
tively nipped to hold her under her cover, and in the same 
moment he was aware of a whisper somewhere that said: 
“Good Health!” the motor now leaping onward, Sueela 
gone. 

When he flung a glance backward, he saw her running, 
struggling forward, but backward from him, he fast abandon¬ 
ing her. . . . 

What in the world a man should do now he did not know. 
All the ruth that was in him, all the God’s pity, groaned and 
rued. To dash back to her on foot . . . but Spiciewegieho¬ 
tiu could not manage the motor. ... To be with either was 
bitterly to abandon the other. . . . 

As for Spiciewegiehotiu, not having Sueela’s actual experi¬ 
ence that getting off sometimes made the motor go, she did not 
at first know what had caused the motor to spurt forward, but 
very quickly realized in some way that Sueela had leaped off; 
and immediately a scream: “ Sueela! Make it stop!” 

Cobby now thought of stopping to wait for Sueela, the 
ground here near the hill’s'brow being not so steep, but when 
he now peered round, it was to see Sueela down on the ground, 
and the foremost group of Swingoni almost upon her: so, see¬ 
ing the needlessness of imperilling Spiciewegiehotiu and him¬ 
self, he shrank from stopping—though, in fact, if Spiciewe¬ 
giehotiu had been shot, it would have been by some random 
arrow not meant for her, she being wealth to the savages; and 


295 


THE SWINGONI 

over the hill’s top they swiftly went* Spiciewegiehotiu in a 
flush of rage beating upon his face, shrieking, wriggling in his 
grip to he free, he crying to her: “It is useless!” she in a 
scarlet fever of passion still screaming at him: “Cobby, let 
me go!” But on, downhill, he bounded, till after a while 
their fight capsized the bicycle; and when she started up to fly 
back, he caught her, and they fought, they by this time being 
quite out of sight of the tribesmen. 

Spiciewegiehotiu flopped down upon the path, clasped her 
hands on the top of her head, and bawled: “ Sueela!” 

Only when Cobby represented to her that Nasandhlwana’s 
force was near on the mountain, that Sueela might be merely 
wounded, that something might yet be done, did she consent to 
go on with him. 

But when near morning he and she—for she would not be 
kept away—and with them the King himself and a posse of 
spears afresh reached the spot, it was to see the body of Sueela 
decapitated, her hands hacked off, for the savages had 
gnashed; and when the posse crossed the lake at a drift to 
take vengeance, the village was still and dead, the slayers 
fled. 

Thus Sueela met her death there: it had all happened in 
three crammed minutes of impulse, accident, and catastrophe; 
and the moving Finger, having writ, moved on. 


XL 


EN ROUTE 

T O Nasandhlwana, as to all, Cobby was now, in fact, “a 
god”; and it was with a squad of Wo-Mashenya cavalry 
that he, on the motor, and Spiciewegiehotiu, horsed, 
re-entered Eshowe. 

There already Spiciewegiehotiu saw everything changed; 
the foreign regiments all withdrawn; coming for her along 
the country-roads, shuffling with brush of shoulders, both bull 
and cow, in crowds, in monstrous mobs, trotting with rowdy 
knock-knees, and orbs distraught, and horns transformed to 
the oddities of form to which the Wa-Mashenya warp all their 
horns; and flocks of Wa-Ngwanya on all paths, thronging back 
to their abandoned kraals, thronging out from Eshowe to wel¬ 
come Spiciewegiehotiu with shoutings of frenzy, for through¬ 
out Wo-Ngwanya like loosened effluvia had flown the news that 
Cobby was “a god,” god like beyond doubt, and on their side, 
their Queen’s knight and might, and not they were defeated, 
but Nasandhlwana was defeated, and M’Niami: and they were 
coming, had come, again, singly, in multitudes of groups, 
grinning pilgrimages, gay of gait, so that now every wood 
round Eshowe was full of brisk fingers picking withies with 
which to rebuild; and in very few days a new Eshowe stood 
there. 

But Spiciewegiehotiu was stone—showed no elation, her 
face blanched like marble; she hardly spoke; only, suddenly, 
as she sat astare, she would clasp her hands on the top of her 
head to bawl: “Sueela!” 

Of which sorrow of hers Cobby writes: “I have heard 
296 


297 


EN ROUTE 

her say many gross things, as was to be anticipated, but, 
such is that gift of grace of which she has from Heaven, 
I have hardly ever seen her do anything gross and ugly, until 
now that she shows this negro grief. No, here, I admit, 
she is not pretty, her mouth opening oblong, as she bawls 
‘Sueela!’ the whole exhibition having that indecent ab¬ 
originalness of the motions and emotions of children and 
lower animals; but all the more heart-breaking for me is this 
tribulation because of its naked and shameless sincerity; and 
something in me, too, screams ‘Sueela.’ ...” 

Sueela’s body, brought back, was taken to Mandaganya’s 
singed domain, that the Queen might not see it, and there, on 
the third day after the return, was buried in the presence of 
Daisy. Two hours after which, while Cobby was busied 
about a waggon with six negroes who had eagerly agreed to 
go three hundred miles with him, he now making final prepa¬ 
rations for the trek, a deputation of councillors, having Man- 
daganya for their spokesman, approached him, to beg him 
not to go, but to wed the Queen, and be their King. 

Now, no protest so far had come from Spiciewegiehotiu as 
to his preparations—no prayer to stay—nothing. And this 
deputation surprised him. 

“How do you know that the Queen would wed me?” he 
asked them; upon which one of the councillors winked at 
him; another cried out: “That all right—na!” and he under¬ 
stood that now Spiciewegiehotiu was moving to hold him. 

And though he knew that she would not now burn his 
things—for he had observed the fuel-heraps under the wag¬ 
gons, and had given her to know that that was a good thing 
for her and for the sigodhlo that she had not accomplished 
her will—yet he now felt a misgiving, a fear lest she might 
be at some scheme to keep him. 

“Now, Mandaganya,” he answered, “this is not fair. You 
know that I am not going eagerly, but because I must, be¬ 
cause I, like you, am a priest, an elder, knowing more than 
children, and having duties to do. And you but make harder 


298 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

the doing of what has to be done when you ask me not to 
do it” 

She bent her head; and they left him. 

The next day everything was ready for the departure: but, 
for the heart-break of parting, he delayed still three days, 
spent mainly with the Queen, to whom he showed the uses 
of many things which he was leaving with her, he meaning to 
go with only one waggon; and she made no prayer that he 
would remain, being now all shut in herself, dumb, sullen, 
anon muttering the name of her dead friend. 

But on the afternoon of departure an uproar arose which 
Cobby afterwards believed to have been engineered by 
her. . . . 

It was somewhat before sunset; his six were awaiting him 
with the waggon in the square, he having been in the royal 
hut an hour to say good-bye, when the populace began to 
clamour at the sigodhlo gate, got in, or were let in, got into 
the royal grounds, or were let in, and came roaring in thou¬ 
sands up the avenue, clamouring: “Marry Sir Cobby! 
Make Sir Cobby remain! Make Sir Cobby King!” 

In the midst of which Spiciewegiehotiu suddenly flung 
herself before him, holding him, saying with an imploring 
face: “You stay, no? They call you a god, they want you 
for their King. You stay with them and me, no?” 

Cobby groaned. “Ah, how pitiless of you, to make it so 
bitterly difficult for me! If you see me leaving my soul be¬ 
hind me, do you not conceive that I go because I ought, and 
must?” 

“And you think me live?” she cried to him: “Sueela dead 
—through you: you not always act right! You think me 
live? Three days after you gone me stiff dead!” 

A flush of resentment rushed up his face. “Oh, shame, to 
attempt to hold me with such a statement! But even that 
shall not hold me. Understand that I go.” 

“What! You say that to me? Whether me live or die?” 

“Yes! I say so!” 


EN ROUTE 299 

Upon which up at once she sprang in a flush of passion to 
rush to the door, to throw it open, and to shriek to the people 
with the shrill tongue of a shrew: “Go way! He care 
nothing about you and me! He not want me! Go way! 
Go way!” 

Then she crashed the shutter into its place afresh, and went 
to stand with her back propped upon the wall, all pallid now, 
he walking about with pocketed hands, dumb, wrung with 
sorrow. 

And presently he stepped to her, held her shoulders, 
touched each of her cheeks with a kiss, she like an image 
which is kissed, while a breath that trembled and broke rose 
in him in a struggle to utter “good-bye”; and not till he was 
well in flight from her did she make one step to restrain him, 
but then stopped, and dropped down, staring, while he with 
a bent body fled away for the gateway, sobs now gobbling 
out of his god-forgotten solitude. 

So he went away; but during the next days made but slow 
progress, lingering within Wo-Ngwanya, bidding a repining 
good-bye to its rills and wilds and winds. A garnet in a 
fragment of gneiss that rolled down a roadside hill to him 
he kissed before dropping into his pocket; he picked up a 
sprig of grass, of indigo, a francolin’s feather, to drop into 
his pocket for parting’s sake, his heart aching. 

Anon he would say droopingly to the executioner, who had 
proffered himself with enthusiasm to be of the six: “Well, 
Sandelikatze, my friend, how do you say that she is faring?” 
to which Sandelikatze would ever answer: “You not fret: 
she get over it. When anybody once try to die, and not die, 
they not try again.” 

On the second evening they turned into Hyena Pass, and 
on the third evening were still no further than that Hyena 
Kranz where the cavern is in which Cobby had chloroformed 
Macray and the rest of the sleepers, and had been arrested 
by the Queen’s men dashing out from ambush. There they 
stayed the night; and he, listening to the cascade expatiating 


300 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 


to itself on its special case, lifting his eyes to the scintillat¬ 
ing bit of sky visible within the theatre of cliff, sat for hours 
at the cavern’s mouth, smoking, thinking of how in that near 
thicket Sueela’s lips, sealed for evermore, had kissed him a 
second time of thrice, and he had twice wildly kissed the 
Queen in the interior chamber, to be sentenced to those thirty 
days which he had served in “The Elephant.” 

All his six were asleep in the exterior hall when he walked 
into that interior hall, to sleep on the spot, as nearly as he 
could recall, where the Queen had slept, or pretended to 
sleep. 

And presently he slept—not for long, wakened by the ache 
of the weight of that solitude that lay upon him, and for life 
would lie, feeling now, as not before, how really the being of 
his cousin had become an ingredient of his blood, and how 
grievous without her, as without serum, was his disease. He 
groaned in the dark; but did not harbour the impulses that 
spurred him to turn back to her kisses. 

And again he slept, longer this time; but this time had a 
nightmare in which he seemed to be fighting with a cheetah, 
which floored and was choking him—till he woke: and now 
he found that some forearm was over his throat interfering 
with his breathing, and somebody near him. 

He sat up, could see nothing but, groping warily, felt a 
face . . . hair. . . . 

And now fulness of love overflowing flooded his soul, ex¬ 
ultancy, extravagance of gratitude, a broken-hearted lowli¬ 
ness, he dropping back to sob on his face a long while, 
steadily but soft, so as not to wake her. 


XL I 


AFRICA 

“£^<0 you have come?” he said to her, seated beside her 
in the morning light. 

She shrugged, she smiled a little, hugging her shins, 
“Eheh, me come.” 

“You love me?” 

“Eheh. And you, no?” 

“Eheh.” 

“So you come back now with me, no?” 

“Ah, now, don’t start that again ... I am all in heaven! 
I love God! And you?” 

She shrugged. “Eheh.” 

“So you actually come with me ... I can’t, I can’t, real¬ 
ize it! .. . But what in the world have you done about the 
Government?” 

“Me proclaim Rambya King. Me get Mandaganya to con¬ 
sent.” 

He clapped his fingers. “You sagacious thing! You wise 
nut!”—this Rambya being a nobody, a blacksmith, but noted 
for strength in the head. (He had been poisoned at Cobby’s 
“banquet.”) 

“And what,” he asked, “do the people say about Rambya?” 

“They trust in me. Most of them say yes.” 

“Good, good. . . . And how did you come?” 

“Me come on a horse to the top of the pass, then me come 
on alone on foot. The town come after me; me order them 
back; they lift up their voice and bawl. . . . But they not 
love me more than me love them.” Now her countenance 

301 


302 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

convulsed, tears flowed down her stony cheeks, till on a sud¬ 
den she chuckled, leaping up, saying: “Come, let’s get away 
before me run back.” 

That evening they were among the foot-hills south of the 
mountains, where, seated on a stone with her, holding her 
thumb, looking over plain and wood that rolled away to the 
frame of space, he said to her: “We two shall need, I 
can see, to be extremely distant and discreet with each other, 
during this great trek.” 

“Why so?” she wished to know. 

“There are reasons. One is that you are going to a land 
of a good many handsome and gifted men of your own race, 
and I think it only fair to you that you should see these be¬ 
forehand, so as to make a deliberate selection, before I rivet 
you irrevocably to me.” 

At which she smiled a little on him, with something of 
motherly pity, saying: “Poor Cobby: you something like a 
child. Cobby soon see.” 

“I mean it, though,” he said: “you, too, will see.” 

“Yes, me chiefly, poor me. ... As to those handsome 
men in that country, me will love them only with my eyes, 
Cobby; Cobby me love with my backbone, no, Cobby?” 
She touched his knee, and his being flushed to hues of emo¬ 
tion like the vacuum tube flushing to chromes of beauty at the 
first stroke of the pump. 

That night, however, and several nights, they slept within 
separate coverts, until they were suddenly abandoned by 
their six companions, this taking place on the sixth midnight. 

On that sixth day, during the rest following the midday 
food, the whim took Spiciewegiehotiu to be given instruction 
in the use of the machine-gun, which Cobby had considered 
needful to bring with him. “Show me how you do it,” she 
begged him; so he got up, deposited the gun on the ground, 
and, sitting before it—one of the little Vicker’s—exhibited 
how to thread the belt-bag through the feed-block, how to 
drag down the crank-handle once, and once again, and then 


AFRICA 303 

let her thumb the thumb-pieces, and be shaken by the shocks 
of its strong agitation, as it threw out a few bullets. 

Her verdict, as she stood up from it, was: “It good”; and 
then she wished to know: “But where you get the cartridges 
to put into the belt?” upon which he pointed out the small- 
arms ammunition-box in which the cartridges were, the six 
Wa-Ngwanya being spectators at the exhibition: and there 
the incident appeared to end. 

But in the silence of that night Spiciewegiehotiu rose up, 
stole through bush to Cobby, assured herself that he slept, 
then went soft and woke the Wa-Ngwanya, led them to the 
waggon, and again, slowly, showed them how to load the 
gun. Two then took the S.A.A. box, one the tripod, one 
the gun, and she walked a mile with them northward to a 
spot where, they having now dropped prostrate before her, 
she said to them: “Show Rambya how to shoot the gun. . . . 
Tell him me say again me will be hoping in that country me 
go to that he soon add Wo-Mashenya to Wo-Ngwanya; but 
he better let M’Niami alone till Daisy dead. . . . Tell him 

me say Good luck. . . . Get up, my sons, let me kiss-” 

She could utter no more. 

So it was with opened arms that Cobby hurried to her early 
the next morning to exclaim: “The men are all gone!” 

“My goodness!” says she: “they run away?” 

“Yes, what in the world shall we do now?” 

“Oh, well,” she said resignedly, “me-and-you, Cobby. 
Me know Africa: we get through. You drive, me your voor- 
looper, no?” 

But Cobby was all in dismay; and in an hour another out¬ 
cry from him: “The machine-gun is gone!” 

“Gone . . . ?” 

“The men have stolen it!” 

“My goodness!” 

“We may bitterly regret its absence before long!” 

“Never mind, Cobby,” she said, her hands on his shoulders: 
“we fight with rifles, if we have to fight. Me-and-you, Cobby; 



304 CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

me-and-you, no? Me give you a kiss. . . . That something 
like a machine-gun, no, Cobby ?” 

He called the oxen; they walked on. 

And with many a care and scare, and with many a scrape 
and escape, they trekked many days—or say wended, one 
of the early incidents of the journey being their bursting into 
a belt of tsetse, out of which their cattle emerged infirm and 
collapsing one by one: whereupon, abandoning waggon and 
goods in uninhabited country, afoot they two confronted the 
realm whose name is Immeasurable, Innumerable, Immutable, 
Unimaginable, the Egyptian Sphinx, the Pan of Africa. Once 
north of the Sabi, once north of the Limpopo, they fought 
formal battles, with Spiciewegiehotiu as commander, the sec¬ 
ond struggle going on several days from a kopie on whose 
granite top was no water, they then naked save for a rag that 
might as well have been cast away, and haggard with a 
hunger which the “cabbage” scooped from the roots of leaves 
of the dwarfpalm hardly appeased. 

But, tattered, famished, parched, chewing anon morsels of 
the soft wood of baobab to win a little moisture, reduced to 
the elements of being, brutish in need, they still were not 
savage nor brute, and Spiciewegiehotiu got still a sense of the 
god’s gesture when, on the top of that kopie, or where they 
halted in some darksome covert under vaults all informed 
with stars, she saw him conning the altitude of Alpha An- 
dromedse, remarking Alpha Eridani, connoting the slope of 
Canopus. “Me think me never to understand how that box 
tell where we are,” she would say; and would add: “There 
is only Cobby.” 

Nor was that other box, of cardboard, so guarded by 
Cobby, less astounding—how thousands of cows could be 
crowded into that petty space. “This paper is money —cow¬ 
ries, as it were,” he told her, in English now—they lying one 
night within a limestone bunk behind bush, invisible to each 
other, thunders sounding outside, the drought now done, 
the rains of April, puddling, the floods descending —“monkey 


AFRICA 305 

is not wealth; how much money we two have! yet how little 
wealth: bread, butter, boots, is wealth: anything desirable 
for itself, acquired from Nature by work , i. e., by using Force 
or Power, and moving something by God’s help—that is 
wealth; and money represents wealth in some places, since it 
fills little space.” 

“But it mine, this wealth!” she cried: “how you say it 
yours? How Caray can give it to you, if it mine?” 

“Well, he did. It was buried—lost to you. Then he gave 
it me.” 

“But how he could? My father’s wealth!” 

“No, not your father’s; his ‘by law’; but fantastic laws 
are to be laughed at. Well is good, or God; wealth is goods , 
or God, or Power, or Force; the effect of Force is motion; 
and when Force moves anything, 4 work 9 is said to be done, 
as when a planet flies, or a stone drops, or when by God’s 
help we wink, or plough: so wealth or goods belongs to 
workers who move things by Force, or Power, or God’s help, 
to acquire them from Nature. But your father could not 
have moved enough things in hundreds of years to acquire 
seven million pounds’ worth of things, and the laws that say 
that he did are laws made by lubbers, ‘lawyer’ minds, men 
who, not being trained in thought, cannot think, who, in so 
far as they are not scientists, know nothing, but are like chil¬ 
dren, who cannot build, but play at building, making sand- 
mounds, not houses of men. Anyway, there is no you and 
I. We will call the money yours, and I will spend it for 
you.” 

“Oh, but no,” she muttered, “we call it yours, and me 
spend it for you.” 

He answered: “It may spend itself in the rains close to 
our skeletons. Still fifty miles before the Limpopo.” 

It was soon after this that she generaled him in their sec¬ 
ond (Limpopo battle), she being, moreover, a great gun at 
game, and had, moreover, a singular knack in catching fish 
by different tricks, sometimes with nothing but her hand, a 


306 


CHILDREN OF THE WIND 

trick of the wrist, or a baobab-shell affixed to a stick, catch¬ 
ing jack in the upper branches of the Zavora, barbel in the 
Limpopo, a knack that four or five times gave them life where 
game was lacking, and where no kraal, lost in the dark heart 
of the vast of some haunted forest, was wrought to sorrow 
with all their poverty and forlornness. 

Yet, even in fever regions in the rains of April and May, 
their health remained excellent, and if Cobby anon desponded, 
not so Spiciewegiehotiu, who, in spite of her grossesse , was 
not often tired, never perspired, and when they got to the 
granite country, craggy with quartz outcrops, bordering upon 
the northern Boers, the girl-child to which Spiciewegiehotiu 
gave birth in a deserted village, in which not a dog was 
still visible—a girl-child to which they agreed to give the 
name “Sueela”—presently gave evidence of no little vigour 
and grip on life, in spite of its parents’ training in trepida¬ 
tion and privation. 

Thenceforth, the tokens of civilization now commencing 
to unfold themselves before them, the faring became merrier. 
Clothed now and comfortable in stomach, the three reached 
Pietermaritzberg; and at Port Natal Spiciewegiehotiu, although 
yonder in the North she had often watched the rotting Florida 
cocked on its rocks, widened her eyes one night at sight of 
the lines of lights of a liner, a street of dream and mystery 
on the sea, built by the Divinity that builded the sea and 
the bee’s crib, and still trickier builds and trickier, increas¬ 
ingly. . . . 


THE END 






























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